Af­ter two deaths and as many res­ig­na­tions, women’s foot­ball is back on a sta­ble foot­ing with the elec­tion of Ver­net­ta Flan­ders as the new pres­i­dent of the T&T Women’s Foot­ball League (T&TWoLF).

Flan­ders who now holds the po­si­tion of man­ager­ess of the coun­try’s Un­der-17 girls team was elect­ed un­op­posed, there­by re­plac­ing Su­san Joseph-War­rick who re­signed in 2020 from all foot­ball in T&T, in­clu­sive of her po­si­tion as sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and pres­i­dent of the T&TWoLF.

Joseph-War­rick called an end to her in­volve­ment in lo­cal foot­ball in Sep­tem­ber 2020 when FI­FA ap­peared to have won a bat­tle through the lo­cal courts to have its Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee re­place the le­git­i­mate­ly-elect­ed foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion of which she was a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive.

That year, FI­FA al­so sus­pend­ed T&T from all FI­FA sanc­tioned foot­ball tour­na­ments.

From 2020 to now women’s foot­ball en­dured a rig­or­ous ex­is­tence, not on­ly be­cause of Joseph-War­rick’s res­ig­na­tion but al­so due to the deaths of Claire Orr, the then as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of tour­na­ments and com­pe­ti­tions and Jameela Mo­hammed, the then gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

But at a vir­tu­al TTWoLF An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tions on March 31, Flan­ders, who took over the po­si­tion of gen­er­al sec­re­tary fol­low­ing Mo­hammed’s un­time­ly pass­ing last year, was elect­ed un­op­posed as pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion as Hoyte opt­ed not to con­test the elec­tions, and Marie Mout­tet was cho­sen for the va­cant as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of tour­na­ments and com­pe­ti­tions that was left by George who al­so died last year.

Al­so join­ing Flan­ders’ ex­ec­u­tive was Mo­han Ron­nie Per­sad who was un­con­test­ed for the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer; Annleyes Col­lette- first vice pres­i­dent; Carel Per­cy- or­di­nary mem­ber; Kei­di Brath­waite- or­di­nary mem­ber; Saman­tha Kissoon- as­sis­tant sec­re­tary op­er­a­tions; Patrice Su­perville- as­sis­tant sec­re­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion; and Chris­tine Rose - who got the bet­ter of Iken­na Joseph for the po­si­tion of trea­sur­er six votes to four.

Mean­while, Jenelle Nedd is the lone new­com­er to the women’s foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing her ap­point­ment as gen­er­al sec­re­tary by Flan­ders soon af­ter.

Flan­ders in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day said her ob­jec­tive is to en­sure that women’s foot­ball is re­stored to the po­si­tion it once was and that there is a league this year. “ I have been in­volved in women’s foot­ball for a very long time so I am very much aware of the task ahead of me. I know it’s go­ing to be an ar­du­ous task if I can get a bye-in by all the stake­hold­ers.

I un­der­stand the task ahead of me as well so it’s just to pro­mote or pro­pel women’s foot­ball so that we can get back to where we once were.

The women’s team ac­tu­al­ly is the foun­da­tion for the na­tion­al pro­gramme, there is where the play­ers de­vel­op, this is where they’re sup­posed to come from, so if we do our jobs cor­rect­ly and feed in­to the na­tion­al pro­gramme then we can on­ly strength­en the na­tion­al team.”

Ac­cord­ing to Flan­ders: “ The first thing we want to do is get a league go­ing be­fore the year is out, but af­ter that, WoLF has to have a bit more pres­ence in the na­tion­al land­scape.

We’re try­ing to not make WoLF sea­son­al, WoLF shouldn’t ex­ist on­ly for a few months out of the year, but there should be stuff hap­pen­ing all-year round if we’re se­ri­ous about de­vel­op­ment.”

The new women’s foot­ball boss said she al­so wants to add a few age-group cat­e­gories to the WoLF com­pe­ti­tions and tour­na­ments this year.