The ex­ec­u­tive of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is throw­ing their full sup­port be­hind in­cum­bent pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee for an­oth­er term in the up­com­ing elec­tions.Yes­ter­day, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of TTFA Shel­don Phillips re­vealed that Tim Kee is in­ter­est­ed in con­test­ing the po­si­tion he held for the past term and said a re­lease stat­ing his in­ten­tions was ex­pect­ed to be sent out to the me­dia soon.

To date, Tim Kee is the sec­ond per­son to ex­press a de­sire to con­test the pres­i­den­cy of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, fol­low­ing a re­lease last week by W Con­nec­tion boss David John-Williams that he will al­so be go­ing up for the pres­i­dent's po­si­tion when the elec­tion of of­fi­cers are held at an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) on No­vem­ber 29.

How­ev­er, Phillips said that nei­ther Tim Kee or John-Williams have filed their nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments as yet and it is on­ly when that hap­pens then he will be cer­tain who will be con­test­ing the elec­tions.The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments is Wednes­day and this list will be sent out to the me­dia some 10 days be­fore the elec­tions.

Mean­while the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion will at­tempt to erase mis­takes made in the past when it comes to deal­ing with fi­nances. Phillips an­nounced that a team of mem­bers will be ap­point­ed soon by the TTFA with spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to look af­ter the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

"We be­lieve that what­ev­er hap­pened we should not have to pay for what hap­pened in the past and there­fore this team will go out to cor­po­rate T&T and at­tempt to con­vince them to sup­port the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion with a guar­an­tee that there will be re­turns to gain," Phillips said.

There have been re­ports that in the past, monies gained from spon­sors, specif­i­cal­ly due to the per­for­mances and progress of the T&T So­ca War­riors team, end­ed up in the bank ac­count of one man.

Phillips made it clear the team will op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly from the TTFA, but will func­tion un­der the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. The Tim Kee-led as­so­ci­a­tion has made tremen­dous strides with re­spect to the en­hance­ment and de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball over the past three years but still grap­ples to win back the trust of cor­po­rate T&T in light of the neg­a­tive re­ports that em­anat­ed af­ter the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, which the T&T team had qual­i­fied for.

Phillips said the con­cept is to have peo­ple who are in­de­pen­dent from the as­so­ci­a­tion deal with these is­sues as fund­ing is very crit­i­cal for the team to be suc­cess­ful."If you look at any oth­er coun­try or any oth­er suc­cess­ful team in the world and you would recog­nise that their achieve­ments are due large­ly be­cause of the cor­po­rate fund­ing they re­ceive and we are no dif­fer­ent."

The gen­er­al sec­re­tary did not name who the team will be made up of but said they will be re­spon­si­ble for seek­ing fund­ing, not on­ly for the World Cup team but al­so for all the teams in the coun­try. These funds, he adds will be used to pay coach­es and play­ers, to fund pro­grammes and send play­ers on tour­na­ments etc.

"At present we have all our teams do­ing well. The men's and women's teams, the youth teams, the beach foot­ball team as well as our de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes will all ben­e­fit from fund­ing re­ceived from this new team," Phillips said. "Send­ing a young play­er on a tour­na­ment does not cost less than send­ing Ken­wyne Jones but it is im­por­tant for us to main­tain our youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes be­cause this is where we will be get­ting play­ers in the fu­ture to make up our se­nior teams."

In ex­press­ing his views on the sport present­ly Phillips said, "Any­one who has looked at T&T foot­ball from 2012 to present will say that the sport is in a bet­ter po­si­tion now. I think we have been through the worst and now we are see­ing progress in foot­ball. To­day there is hope that our women's team can beat the USA in the com­ing friend­ly match­es...to­day there is hope that our men can qual­i­fy for the World Cup...our beach soc­cer team de­feat­ed Mex­i­co re­cent­ly, so we are see­ing things that we didn't see in 2012 and be­fore.

"Our biggest chal­lenge now is to get cor­po­rate T&T back on board and this is why we are go­ing to ap­point this team very soon."

WAL­TER AL­IBEY