Wal­ter Al­ibey

The staff of the T&T se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball team, in­clu­sive of as­sis­tant coach Hut­son Charles and man­ag­er William Wal­lace have now re­signed.

Fol­low­ing in the wake of the sack­ing of na­tion­al coach Stephen Hart on Thurs­day both men sub­mit­ted their res­ig­na­tion let­ters on Fri­day night to T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent David John-Williams and it is un­der­stood the oth­er as­sis­tant coach Derek King will be ten­der­ing his res­ig­na­tion in the com­ing days.

When con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Guardian Charles con­firmed his res­ig­na­tion and said he took the de­ci­sion to re­sign be­cause it was the prop­er and eth­i­cal thing to do since Hart was the per­son who hired him.

Yes­ter­day, at the T&TFA's An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil, at Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, the sack­ing of Hart was ap­proved, and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to ap­point an in­ter­im coach from T&T as his re­place­ment in the short term ba­sis.

A close source of the TTFA told the Sun­day Guardian that the names of For­mer T&T World Cup cap­tain Dwight Yorke, Rus­sell Lat­apy, Stu­art Charles-Fevri­er, the coach of W Con­nec­tion and Ter­ry Fen­wick of the Foot­ball Fac­to­ry Acad­e­my, have been com­ing off the lips of many mem­bers of the gen­er­al coun­cil, as Hart's suc­ces­sor.

This coach, it is un­der­stood, will take over the team for the next few games and the per­for­mances of the T&T team will de­ter­mine whether the TTFA will go in search of a per­ma­nent coach to take the team to the World Cup and be­yond. The TTFA will seek a per­ma­nent coach who will come from abroad.

Al­so com­ing out of yes­ter­day's meet­ing was a de­ci­sion by the coun­cil to ap­point Richard Piper, the All Sport Pro­mo­tions foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor, as the new man­ag­er of the T&T team.

The TTFA is ex­pect­ed to make an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment on this to­mor­row.

Con­cern­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Charles, the for­mer Strike Squad mid­field­er said he felt com­pelled to re­sign as there were cir­cu­lat­ing ru­mours that he and King were to be fired on De­cem­ber 1st by the TTFA.

He said he's aware that con­cerns were raised by the TTFA pres­i­dent about their com­pe­tence as as­sis­tants coach­es. The Pres­i­dent had al­so made it clear he want­ed Lat­apy and Reynold Car­ring­ton to be Hart's as­sis­tants.

"It was on­ly be­cause Lat­apy turned down the job to coach the T&T Un­der-17s that we were able to keep our jobs" Charles said.

He added, "The pres­i­dent kept on ques­tion­ing Hart on whether we were good enough, and al­though Hart re­spond­ed in the af­fir­ma­tive every time, he still kept on en­quir­ing about our abil­i­ty," Charles ex­plained.

Charles said the TTFA is to blame for the poor per­for­mances of the team to date, point­ing that: "There were se­nior of­fi­cials who kept call­ing play­ers af­ter every train­ing ses­sion and ques­tion­ing them about the ses­sions, look­ing for ways to dis­miss the coach.

Hart was nev­er in a com­fort­able place to do his work as there were al­ways con­cerns.

"The TTFA placed too much pres­sure on the coach, who I still think is the man to car­ry the coun­try to the World Cup."