Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe be­lieves foot­ball clubs ex­press­ing con­cerns that they are un­able to train be­cause of re­stric­tions are on­ly mak­ing ex­cus­es.

Since the gov­ern­ment's re­turn-to-sports or­der on Jan­u­ary 23, clubs have not tak­en to the train­ing pitch for sev­er­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing a vi­o­la­tion of the law of the land and their in­abil­i­ty to as­sem­ble all their play­ers.

Richard Fer­gu­son, the own­er of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers who is set to put on the As­cen­sion In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball League next month, said it is still against the law to be­gin train­ing. Oth­er clubs are com­plain­ing of not hav­ing an en­closed fa­cil­i­ty to train and play while oth­ers have re­sort­ed to re­cruit­ing younger play­ers as it would be more eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day Cud­joe, whose de­ci­sion it was to have on-the-field sports ac­tion this year, said clubs are mak­ing ex­cus­es with­out try­ing. She ex­plained the Min­istry of Health Reg­u­la­tions has catered for all even­tu­al­i­ties.

"That's an ex­cuse I am telling you be­cause if you don't have a nat­u­ral­ly en­closed fa­cil­i­ty you can cor­don off your area and so on be­cause there is leg­is­la­tion that pro­vides for us to ap­prove fa­cil­i­ties. So let's say a spe­cif­ic group is play­ing at X place and they can ex­plain how they cor­don off and con­trol their crowd in their pro­pos­al, of course, we will con­sid­er it and grant the ap­proval ac­cord­ing­ly. But if you have nev­er made an ap­pli­ca­tion or a pro­pos­al, or even tried, and then say this thing isn't work­ing, that is an ex­cuse," the min­is­ter ex­plained.

To date, three or­gan­i­sa­tions have re­ceived ap­proval by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to stage tour­na­ments this year - the Tiger Tanks un­der-20 Tour­na­ment, the As­cen­sion In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment which is sched­uled to be­gin in mid-March and the Next Lev­el Con­sult­ing Un­der-19 De­vel­op­ment Tour­na­ment that is set to kick-off lat­er this year.

Cud­joe said her min­istry and the sports com­pa­ny have giv­en sport­ing bod­ies and its of­fi­cials' am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press their con­cerns about the sched­uled re­turn-to-sport play, say­ing: " When you ap­ply for clear­ance to train, you have to tell us we in­tend to train and play at this venue and so on, or this is how we in­tend to con­trol the crowd. But to say you can't train be­cause you don't have ac­cess to an en­closed area, that is an ex­cuse.

We met with groups, we had a meet­ing invit­ing sport­ing bod­ies so that they can ask ques­tions and so on, and any­body who is tru­ly con­cerned about those things would have been at that meet­ing, and still if they have ques­tions they can ask SporTT or ask the min­istry so you can't say it's not work­ing if you haven't tried."