An­drew Gioan­net­ti

When the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Na­tion­al Su­per League re­sumes on Sun­day, one of the most recog­nis­able teams in the coun­try, Joe Pub­lic, will be ab­sent from the fix­ture list.

The club gave the TTFA no­tice of its with­draw­al from the Na­tion­al Su­per League and the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) First Di­vi­sion, on Wednes­day.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the club's gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sam Phillips, said he was not in a po­si­tion to re­veal de­tailed in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances of the club's with­draw­al, but he did con­firm that the rea­son was pri­mar­i­ly fi­nan­cial.

Joe Pub­lic was on­ly one of two teams (league leader WASA FC the oth­er) to play six match­es this sea­son, more than any oth­er club. It man­aged just one draw and five loss­es.

The club fin­ished sec­ond from bot­tom last sea­son and on­ly re­mained in the Su­per League be­cause of the league's ex­pan­sion. The zon­al EFA team al­so strug­gled this and last sea­son. The club was rel­e­gat­ed from the EFA Pre­mier Di­vi­sion last sea­son and sat at the bot­tom of the First Di­vi­sion stand­ings at the time of its with­draw­al, with two open­ing loss­es.

Pri­or to last year's trou­bled cam­paign, the club was re­gard­ed among the strongest in the coun­try.

Most re­cent­ly, the club cap­tured the Na­tion­al Su­per League tre­ble in the 2011/2012 sea­son, win­ning the league, knock­out and Christ­mas Cup com­pe­ti­tions, then fin­ished run­ner-up in the league to WASA FC the sea­son af­ter.

Joe Pub­lic's Su­per League tre­ble win­ning sea­son came with­in the same year it with­drew from the TT Pro League. It se­cured three Pro League ti­tles (1998, 2006 and 2009), two FA tro­phy ti­tles and two CFU Club Cham­pi­onships ti­tles in 1998 and 2000. It joined the coun­try's top tier foot­ball league in 1997, a year af­ter its es­tab­lish­ment by Jack Warn­er, for­mer vice pres­i­dent at Fi­fa and TTFF spe­cial ad­vi­sor.

A man­ag­er at the club sug­gest­ed that the club's coach­ing school will re­main in op­er­a­tion.

TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Shel­don Phillips ad­vised that the TTFA's Tour­na­ments and Com­pe­ti­tions Com­mit­tee will re­view the mat­ter to al­ter the cur­rent stand­ings and up­com­ing fix­tures. The ad­just­ed stand­ings is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased be­fore the league's re­sump­tion on Sun­day.

For the club to re­join the Su­per League, it will be re­quired to en­ter the EFA's First Di­vi­sion and gain pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, be­fore play­ing the Cham­pi­ons of Cham­pi­ons Su­per League qual­i­fiers.

In the club's prime, it boast­ed the ser­vices of cur­rent na­tion­al cap­tain Ken­wyne Jones and for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers Ker­ry Bap­tiste, Brent San­cho, Arnold Dwari­ka, Cyd Gray and oth­ers.