Out­spo­ken North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA) vice-pres­i­dent An­tho­ny "Da­da" Wick­ham has re­signed from his po­si­tion with the re­gion­al foot­ball body with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

This was cit­ed in a let­ter to cur­rent NFA pres­i­dent and for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Ross Rus­sell in a lat­er dat­ed De­cem­ber 21, 2021.

Back on De­cem­ber 28, 2020, Rus­sell was legal­ly elect­ed as the next pres­i­dent of the NFA of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion af­ter his slate won by a land­slide to se­cure all sev­en po­si­tions that were at stake to man­age the zone from 2021-2023.

Rus­sell, the La Hor­quet­ta Rangers goal­keep­er coach, was first elect­ed pres­i­dent of the zone at an ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing (EGM) arranged by Wick­ham and his sup­port­ing clubs at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s on Box­ing Day (2020). The meet­ing was a re­con­vened meet­ing af­ter the first meet­ing on De­cem­ber 12 failed to at­tract a quo­rum.

How­ev­er, that gath­er­ing was deemed to be un­con­sti­tu­tion­al by the zone since it had no in­for­ma­tion about the meet­ing.

Nev­er­the­less, Rus­sell, 53, of Diego Mar­tin, was elect­ed un­op­posed in the pres­ence of 16 clubs at the zone's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing which took place at the St James Youth Cen­tre, Fort George Road, St James.

A for­mer ti­tle-win­ning coach in the T&T Pro League with De­fence Force, Rus­sell was due to face off with na­tion­al foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor Richard Piper for the po­si­tion, but Piper, who worked with re­cent­ly de­ceased An­tho­ny Har­ford for over a decade as op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, cit­ed out­side in­ter­fer­ence in the zone's elec­tions and de­cid­ed not to par­tic­i­pate and with­drew his nom­i­na­tion form.

The meet­ing al­so had to ad­dress the is­sue of the nom­i­na­tions forms which were not com­plet­ed ac­cord­ing to the re­quire­ments of the con­sti­tu­tion.

How­ev­er, Wick­ham made a mo­tion to have the forms ac­cept­ed and he was suc­cess­ful with 14 clubs vot­ing in sup­port of it and two ab­stain­ing.

In ad­di­tion to Rus­sell, Wick­ham, the founder and head coach of Trend­set­ter Hawks which has pro­duced a num­ber of tal­ent­ed na­tion­al se­nior and youth play­ers, was elect­ed as first vice-pres­i­dent via 10 votes to six over Tris­tan Charles.

The oth­er elect­ed mem­bers who were elect­ed in­clud­ed Rod­ney Stowe (sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent), Michael Thomas (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion), Nevick De­noon (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary op­er­a­tions) and Ka­reem Paul, and Dex­ter Har­ris as or­di­nary mem­bers

How­ev­er, in an email to Rus­sell last De­cem­ber, Wick­ham cit­ed his rea­son for re­sign­ing his po­si­tion as due to a num­ber of hin­drances neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the abil­i­ty to per­form his role to which he was elect­ed.

The let­ter added: "To fur­ther clar­i­fy, it has been a lit­tle over a year now since the new ex­ec­u­tive was elect­ed and to date, we have not been able to ac­com­plish any­thing that was promised to the mem­bers of the NFA.

"To date, out­stand­ing pay­ments to ref­er­ees, as well as the 2019 league win­ners re­main un­paid.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we are yet to make any head­way with re­gard to the NFA's bank ac­count and oth­er im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion that is re­quired to be hand­ed over to the new­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive.

"On be­ing elect­ed, I took a stand to bring about change in the NFA, how­ev­er, if cir­cum­stances be­yond my con­trol hin­der me be­ing able to bring about change, I see no rea­son to con­tin­ue in the po­si­tion of first vice-pres­i­dent.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly and sub­se­quent to the Min­istry of Sports in­di­ca­tion to have con­tact sports re­sume ex­clu­sive­ly for vac­ci­nat­ed ath­letes, I re­gard this as a de­lib­er­ate in­fringe­ment of hu­man rights, and as such, fur­ther sup­ports my de­ci­sion to make my ex­it from the NFA.

"Con­se­quent­ly, I am left with no choice but to ten­der my res­ig­na­tion with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. I, there­fore, take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the vot­ing mem­ber­ship for the op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ford­ed to me to serve them, and to wish the Ex­ec­u­tive all suc­cess in their way for­ward," Wick­ham end­ed.

Reached for com­ment, Rus­sell said the mem­bers of the NFA ex­ec­u­tive were yet to meet to dis­cuss the let­ter of res­ig­na­tion by Wick­ham and al­so chart a way for­ward.