The T&T Pro League ap­pears well on course to achiev­ing the ob­jec­tives set out in gov­ern­ment's plan for sports over the next five years.

At least so says Dex­ter Skeene, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the T&T Pro League, in his fea­ture ad­dress to play­ers at the first ever Play­er De­vel­op­ment Sem­i­nar at the VIP Lounge of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, yes­ter­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment will de­vel­op plans and pro­grammes to en­cour­age many cit­i­zens to be­come in­volved in sport and recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties. He al­so re­vealed that T&T will be aim­ing to be a world class sport­ing na­tion by es­tab­lish­ing an all en­com­pass­ing pol­i­cy to in­crease the pool of tal­ent from where more world cham­pi­ons will emerge and gain in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.

In a ten-page ad­dress, Skeene said that his pro league was on course to achiev­ing these goals and it in­tend­ed to im­prove its im­age, brand and work hard to en­sure that there was sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the fu­ture.

He said: "In terms of be­com­ing a world class sport­ing na­tion, it is im­per­a­tive that play­ers are placed in a pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ment. To be­come world class, you must be play­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly and I mean per­form­ing in a pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ment for a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od of time. The T&T Pro League fits these cri­te­ria."

The pro league boss boasts that his league is the on­ly pro­fes­sion­al league which runs through­out the year and em­ploys hun­dreds of youths, coach­es and tech­ni­cal staff in the process.

"It is an in­dus­try which is crit­i­cal if we are to be world class in foot­ball, the num­ber one sport in the world, if T&T is to qual­i­fy for a world cup on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. With ref­er­ence to en­cour­ag­ing many cit­i­zens to be­come in­volved in sport, through its youth de­vel­op­ment sys­tem and com­pe­ti­tion, the T&T Pro League en­cour­ages thou­sands to play the game of foot­ball and hone their skills from an ear­ly age to give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play at the high­est lev­el, re­ceive the best coach­ing in the coun­try and learn the art of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball," Skeene said.

In a sem­i­nar called to pro­vide as­sis­tance to play­ers in their per­son­al de­vel­op­ment Skeene al­so said the league at­tracts all of the na­tion's top youth foot­ballers and in­spires many to strive to be a part of it.

"It cre­ates a path­way for the young in­di­vid­u­als to progress from a ten­der age with the aim and op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller."

How­ev­er, he called on gov­ern­ment to fol­low up on its dri­ve to up­grade fa­cil­i­ties at the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. Some $350 mil­lion has been spent on the league and Skeene called on the play­ers to help im­prove the brand by ed­u­cat­ing them­selves and putting in­to prac­tice the lessons taught at the sem­i­nars. The lessons are al­so aimed at en­hanc­ing play­ers' an­a­lyt­i­cal skills.