William Wal­lace, what have you done? In lo­cal jar­gon, “like you kill priest or what?”

Poor Wal­ly must have thought that he was just fight­ing the In­cred­i­ble Hulk on­ly to re­alise in the past week or so that he has come up against Su­per­man, Iron Man and Bat­woman, es­pe­cial­ly, flex­ing her mus­cles and warn­ing him not to play games.

Wow! you may say. Just when you thought you’d seen it all.

Here we are again, the ex-ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) and this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. The movie con­tin­ues with more char­ac­ters added in­to the script. Let me once again state I have no is­sue with the con­cept of FI­FA’s nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee en­ter­ing any mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion.

What I have a prob­lem with is how it was done to the TTFA and the tim­ing of the ac­tion by the star of the movie - FI­FA. I will not state the ob­vi­ous why FI­FA brought this nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee on­board af­ter their pres­i­dent was here to open the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ (Cou­va).

It is in­ter­est­ing to note that some for­mer na­tion­al foot­ballers such as Dwight Yorke and Car­los Ed­wards are in sup­port of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. I am not sur­prised at this stance as when you speak with so many of our ath­letes in var­i­ous sport­ing dis­ci­plines, they com­plain bit­ter­ly about ad­min­is­tra­tors and, in their view, their seem­ing quest for pow­er and fail­ure to ad­e­quate­ly look af­ter their wel­fare. This bears no dif­fer­ence in foot­ball.

I am sure we re­mem­ber the fight our So­ca War­riors had to en­dure af­ter they re­turned from Ger­many back in 2006. I ex­pect the ‘new’ ex-ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA with­out hav­ing been giv­en a de­cent chance to prove them­selves would be lumped in that cat­e­go­ry.

I al­so read a let­ter to the Guardian Sports Ed­i­tor last Sun­day from Earl 'Ball­hog" Jean who signed the piece as “Foot­ball coach” plead­ing with Wal­lace and com­pa­ny that “...good sense ought to pre­vail”. On­ly on check­ing his cre­den­tials, I re­alised he is the foot­ball coach of W Con­nec­tion of which the for­mer pres­i­dent of TTFA has a sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est. The thing is when foot­ball was on the down­ward slide with mon­ey be­ing thrown away and the debt in­creas­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly from $15 Mil­lion to $50 Mil­lion, where were these voic­es? Sud­den­ly they have sprung to life.

Mr Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive shut down the ‘Home of Foot­ball’ be­cause it did not meet cer­tain statu­to­ry re­quire­ments but in just one week and with a small army of pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies, the fa­cil­i­ty’s well­ness cen­tre is ready for use at no cost to the TTFA.

Now, I am over­joyed be­cause the virus we are fight­ing here is a killer and any­thing any­one can do to save a fel­low hu­man be­ing's life must be ap­plaud­ed. But one must ask the ques­tion: why couldn’t William Wal­lace get the job done and bring the build­ing up to scratch and have it ready for use?

It’s been wide­ly pub­li­cised by the ex-TTFA ex­ec­u­tive that the build­ing was un­fit for use. This is af­ter the build­ing was mas­quer­ad­ed be­hind a grand open­ing with FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Sports and oth­er dig­ni­taries in at­ten­dance. Every­one walked around with big smiles, hand­shakes, hugs and kiss­es and then have the au­dac­i­ty to close the build­ing.

The strange thing is not a word from no one. How come none of the dig­ni­taries ques­tioned the clo­sure of the build­ing? More than that, to me this was not on­ly a black mark against the TTFA but T&T as we took FI­FA’s mon­ey, had an open­ing and it was then shut down with seem­ing­ly no ques­tions asked.

It is al­leged that Wal­lace had put through sev­er­al calls to the Min­is­ter of Sports af­ter the TTFA elec­tions in No­vem­ber 2019 and she nev­er re­turned any. Now, sure­ly, even if she was un­in­ter­est­ed in his foot­ball plans, she must have cared about the ‘Home of Foot­ball’.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, things are not mak­ing sense to me.

All it would have tak­en is a re­turn call to get the rel­e­vant statu­to­ry agen­cies in­volved and the fa­cil­i­ty would have been up and run­ning since Jan­u­ary, so why didn’t they of­fer to fix it be­fore? I al­so read where the Min­is­ter of Sports ad­mit­ted FI­FA had briefed the T&T gov­ern­ment of its im­pend­ing ac­tion, be­fore dis­solv­ing the TTFA and im­pos­ing a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

What is even more star­tling, the Min­is­ter of Sports said, “I am yet to meet with the new head of the body, which FI­FA has put in charge but I ex­pect to do so in the next week or so”.

Yet a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed board for over three months, she nev­er once met with its head. The Min­is­ter ul­ti­mate­ly dis­tanced her­self from the sto­ry and she al­so claimed that Wal­lace nev­er reached out to her and on­ly did so about two weeks be­fore the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed, and in­sist­ing she was neu­tral about the tus­sle be­tween FI­FA and TTFA.

Strange­ly enough, the Min­is­ter says all of a sud­den the TTFA wants pro­tec­tion from FI­FA and points out that two years ago, there was an is­sue with the women’s na­tion­al se­nior team and they asked for the Min­istry’s in­ter­ven­tion. She was told that she should not be in the meet­ing as TTFA re­ports to FI­FA. Were those Wal­lace’s words two years ago?

You see, just like you, I long to get off this roller coast­er. All I want is what’s best for T&T foot­ball.

Thanks to CNC3, I re­cent­ly re­liv­ed one of my life’s most cher­ished mo­ments - a trip to Bahrain to do com­men­tary on our even­tu­al vic­to­ry to seal World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

It hurts to see what is hap­pen­ing to T&T foot­ball off the field. A de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed body af­ter three months in of­fice be­ing hound­ed out by an or­gan­i­sa­tion seek­ing its agen­da and our peo­ple in T&T play­ing a mis­chie­vous po­lit­i­cal game to as­sist that body with their po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions.

Wal­lace, you will do well to re­mem­ber King Austin sang “No one can de­ny, the price of progress is high”.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.