Nigel Si­mon

In light of re­cent is­sues raised by the Women's So­ca War­riors with re­gards to match fees for par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent, Bri­an Lewis says a new struc­ture will be put in place go­ing for­ward for all sport­ing bod­ies.

Last week­end, the na­tion­al women's team threat­ened a boy­cott of the Pan Amer­i­can Games over the non-agree­ment of match fees for the tour­na­ment, be­fore Min­siter of Sport Brent San­cho stepped in to as­sist.While no fi­nan­cial agree­ment was reached be­tween the TTFA, the Women So­ca War­riors, and the Min­istry of Sport, it was agreed that the team would go to the tour­na­ment which be­gins next week in Cana­da as planned while the mat­ter will be re­solved on their re­turn.

The en­tire is­sue was rem­i­nis­cent of the last De­cem­ber when the Women So­ca War­riors left T&T for the Women Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­onship, a qual­i­fi­er to the just con­clud­ed FI­FA Women's World Cup in Cana­da, with US$500.Back then for­mer coach USA's Randy Wal­drum and a few play­ers took to twit­ter to ex­press their dis­gust at the sit­u­a­tion and it was on­ly then the team re­ceived an out­pour­ing of sup­port from lo­cals and for­eign­ers, in­clud­ing the Hait­ian na­tion­al women's team.

Less than a year lat­er, the Maylee At­tin-John­son skip­pered squad finds it­self in an­oth­er fi­nan­cial is­sue, this time over match fees for the tour­na­ment with the play­ers ru­moured to be ask­ing for US$500 a match each.

Af­ter be­ing told by per­sons at­tached to the team of the sit­u­a­tion, Min­is­ter of Sport, Brent San­cho, a for­mer World Cup de­fend­er San­cho said he could not un­der­stand what the is­sues were in terms of match fees and prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Am Games since the TTFA re­cent­ly re­ceived "Gold Cup mon­ey" from Con­ca­caf.

"The fed­er­a­tion got mon­ey from Con­ca­caf for prepa­ra­tion for the Gold Cup and air­fare but we (Gov­ern­ment) are pay­ing for air­fare," San­cho said.In re­sponse, TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips said the Min­is­ter may have been mis­tak­en when it came to the fig­ures. "We did not re­ceive $100,000 from Con­ca­caf (for the Gold Cup). We re­ceived around $33,000, which did go to­wards the two Pan Am teams." He said the as­so­ci­a­tion "re­ceived an ad­vance" from Con­ca­caf in the ab­sence of Min­istry sub­ven­tions which would have gone to­ward the Pan Amer­i­can Games.

How­ev­er, the en­tire sce­nario seems to have tak­en a toll on TTOC boss Lewis, who is al­ready in Cana­da as he tweet­ed on Tues­day af­ter via his @bri­a­clew ac­count: "There is a rea­son for the TTOC hav­ing a pol­i­cy in re­spect of per diems."He then added: "What can I say. No one had the de­cen­cy to ask @TTOC any­thing."

A few tweets lat­er, Lewis tweet­ed: "I sweer some­times I just want to buss a cuss. is bac­cha­nal af­ter bac­cha­nal. Nev­er end­ing. Jeezzz. Dis­tract­ing from whats im­por­tant."Every­time you feel you mak­ing progress. Crazi­ness and its six steps back. And we want to know why cor­po­rate T&T re­luc­tant to sup­port sport."

Con­tact­ed via email, Lewis said, "The TTOC pol­i­cy and our fo­cus is on game-re­lat­ed, per­for­mance-based medal bonus­es and while we can't sus­tain­ably pay stipends per diems or match fees, teams and ath­letes, coach­es and med­ical staff all com­ply and un­der­stand this.With re­gards to the dis­pute be­tween the TTFA and the Women So­ca War­riors, Lewis said the TTOC was not con­sult­ed by TTFA and there­fore was not in a po­si­tion to make an in­formed state­ment.

He said, "The TTOC has al­ways un­der­stood that its re­spon­si­ble for all its team mem­bers not just any one group and the TTFA is not in a po­si­tion to make a cred­i­ble and in­formed state­ment on a TTOC pol­i­cy."In terms of the en­tire T&T con­tin­gent at the Pan Amer­i­can Games, Lewis said the TTOC is un­der­tak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts along with its cor­po­rate part­ners to pro­vide ath­letes with the re­quired wel­fare and prepa­ra­tion sup­port.

How­ev­er, in do­ing so the TTOC is mind­ful of the strate­gic im­por­tance to be fis­cal­ly re­spon­si­ble so as to not place the or­gan­i­sa­tion in a com­pro­mised fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion."Our pol­i­cy is not to de­pend on or place an en­ti­tle­ment de­mand on the Gov­ern­ment," he said. "Any re­quest that is made to Gov­ern­ment is on­ly for trav­el fund­ing as­sis­tance and the TTOC does not make re­quests of gov­ern­ment for ad­min­is­tra­tive fund­ing sup­port."

Asked if he saw an is­sue with sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions giv­ing their ath­letes ad­di­tion­al stipends for games un­der the TTOC, Lewis said lo­cal Olympic body main­tains that all its mem­ber af­fil­i­ates com­ply with its games re­lat­ed poli­cies, as the TTOC and games or­gan­is­ers cov­er trav­el ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals dur­ing mul­ti-sport games un­der the aus­pices of the TTOC.

Pressed fur­ther to clar­i­fy whether the TTOC need to give ap­proval for sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to sup­ple­ment ath­letes' stipends, Lewis re­it­er­at­ed that all Games re­lat­ed de­ci­sions are the purview of the TTOC.He said per­sons should note and be re­mind­ed the TTOC pol­i­cy on stipends, per diems and match fees and the fact that for the first time the lo­cal Olympic Com­mit­tee will have per­for­mance based medal bonus­es.

"We are al­ways mind­ful of ath­lete wel­fare is­sues, and have had dis­cus­sions in re­la­tion to loss of in­come is­sues, how­ev­er loss of in­come sup­ple­men­ta­tion re­quires sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing re­sources if it is to be sus­tained."In the past and at the cur­rent time, loss of in­come sup­ple­men­ta­tion or re­place­ment can­not be fund­ed or sup­port­ed by the TTOC.

"The T&TOC un­der the Olympic Char­ter has sole and ex­clu­sive au­thor­i­ty for the mul­ti-sport events un­der the aus­pices of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee."These are Sum­mer Olympic Games, Win­ter Olympic Games, Youth Olympics, Win­ter Games, Com­mon­wealth Games, Youth Com­mon­wealth Games, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games and the Pan Amer­i­can Games.

"The T&TOC there­fore will on­ly fo­cus on events falling un­der its ju­ris­dic­tion and giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments, I be­lieve our Olympic Com­mit­tee will re­quire in the fu­ture, that all team mem­bers and or­gan­i­sa­tions sign in ad­vance a par­tic­i­pa­tion agree­ment."