WAL­TER AL­IBEY

One year in­to his three-year con­tract, di­rec­tor of foot­ball, Kendal Walkes has been fired by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).Walkes re­ceived his ter­mi­na­tion let­ter from the As­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent David John-Williams via e-mail on Sat­ur­day. The let­ter stat­ed that the As­so­ci­a­tion would pay all debts owed to him for the pe­ri­od dur­ing which he was ap­point­ed.

Walkes' salary was re­port­ed to be $93,000 month­ly.A copy of a re­cent Board meet­ing sug­gest­ed that FI­FA had ad­vised the As­so­ci­a­tion to rene­go­ti­ate the salary be­ing paid to the di­rec­tor.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Walkes said John-Williams and the TTFA were in breach of the con­tract.

He said he has ad­vised his lawyers to write FI­FA re­quest­ing its re­sponse to the em­bat­tled fed­er­a­tion on his con­tract, as he does not be­lieve the gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball, would give such a man­date since his con­tract was ac­cept­ed by the FI­FA when it was first ne­go­ti­at­ed.

Walkes ex­plained while he does not be­lieve in set­tling is­sues by en­gag­ing in mud-sling­ing in pub­lic, he be­lieves the TTFA pres­i­dent is re­luc­tant to ac­cept that he had an au­then­tic con­tract with the foot­ball fed­er­a­tion, which was signed by for­mer pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee.

Walkes' le­gal team which com­pris­es An­dre Lord and Melis­sa Roberts-John, yes­ter­day filed a mo­tion in the High Court to con­firm his con­tract with the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. It will then pro­ceed with ac­tions to re­cov­er monies owed to him.

It is un­der­stood that Tim Kee who was re­placed fol­low­ing a hot­ly con­test­ed elec­tion on No­vem­ber 29 last year, con­tact­ed John-Williams a few months ago to con­firm the au­then­ti­ca­tion of Walkes' con­tract. When con­tact­ed, Tim Kee con­firmed he did sign a con­tract with Walkes, who has coached at the West Chester Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States for 25 years.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Walkes nev­er ap­plied for the TTFA job. In­stead, it was of­fered to him by for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillip. Walkes, who took over from An­ton Corneal in 2014, said the fed­er­a­tion has failed to ho­n­our pay­ment of his earn­ings since No­vem­ber last year, when John-Williams as­sumed of­fice.

He said monies owed to him amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$75,000, but al­though he was told that it would be paid, when he checked with his bank, he saw on­ly $3,000. Apart from the past five months, Walkes will have to be paid for an­oth­er two years if his ser­vices are ter­mi­nat­ed, ac­cord­ing to his con­tract.

Walkes and his fam­i­ly were forced to re­lo­cate from the Unit­ed States af­ter he signed with the TTFA, but yes­ter­day he said fam­i­ly mem­bers were in sham­bles when he broke the news to them. "They are in sham­bles but I have to stand up and stay strong," Walkes said.

Calls to John-Williams and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Aza­ad Khan re­mained unan­swered.