Fran­cis Joseph

The mon­ey dis­pute in­volv­ing mem­bers of the 2006 So­ca War­riors team and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) is shift­ing gears from Lon­don to the Port-of-Spain High Court. The TTFF, the Guardian learnt, is no longer in­ter­est­ed in ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings in Lon­don. So, the TTFF, through its lawyers, have pe­ti­tioned the lo­cal court seek­ing to have the mon­ey dis­pute set­tled in Trinidad. The mat­ter was called be­fore Jus­tice Gre­go­ry Smith in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Wednes­day. There is an ap­pli­ca­tion from the TTFF to lift an or­der which had pre­vent­ed the lo­cal High Court from hear­ing the mon­ey dis­pute un­til the con­clu­sion of ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings in Lon­don.

The lo­cal foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion said it was no longer in­ter­est­ed in the Lon­don pro­ceed­ings be­cause lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the 16 play­ers breached the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause last year in com­ments made to a lo­cal news­pa­per and to oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia hous­es, af­ter the T&T Guardian had ex­clu­sive­ly pub­lished the judg­ment of the ar­bi­tra­tor. Hear­ing of the ap­pli­ca­tion to re­move the or­der has been put to June 16. The post­pone­ment of the ap­pli­ca­tion fur­ther de­lays the at­tempt by the play­ers to re­cov­er mon­ey they claim are due to them as a re­sult of the 2006 World Cup cam­paign. It will be heard in the mid­dle of the So­ca War­riors cam­paign for South Africa 2010.

On May 18, 2008, British ar­bi­tra­tor Ian Mill QC ruled that the So­ca War­riors were en­ti­tled to 50 per cent of the prof­its of the TTFF de­rived from the Road to Ger­many cam­paign. But the pro­ceed­ings nev­er pro­gressed be­cause of the com­ments made af­ter the rul­ing. The dis­pute be­tween the play­ers and the TTFF which had its gen­e­sis in 2004 when T&T be­gan the World Cup jour­ney to Ger­many. The play­ers had orig­i­nal­ly agreed to 30 per­cent of the net profts, but that was changed to 50 per­cent fol­low­ing meet­ings with the TTFF and its spe­cial ad­vi­sor, Jack Warn­er. Ac­cord­ing to Mill, the 50 per­cent was fi­nal­ly agreed up­on on June 12, 2006. Both par­ties had agreed that the hear­ings would be in pri­vate and no one was to dis­close the con­tents of the pro­ceed­ings or judg­ment.

The 16 play­ers who took the TTFF to ar­bi­tra­tion were, Mar­vin An­drews, Christo­pher Bir­chall, At­i­ba Charles, Cyd Gray, Ian Cox, Cor­nell Glen, Sha­ka His­lop, Av­ery John, Stern John, Ken­wyne Jones, Kelvin Jack, Collin Samuel, Brent San­cho, Au­r­tis Whit­ley, Evans Wise and An­tho­ny Wolfe. Rep­re­sent­ing the play­ers were British at­tor­neys Ru­pert But­ler and Mike Town­ley, while Eng­lish­man William Mc Com­mick as­sist­ed by Trinidad lawyers Om Lal­la and Kelvin Ramkissoon ap­peared for the TTFF. The play­ers con­tend­ed that af­ter T&T de­feat­ed Bahrain 2-1 to qual­i­fy for the World Cup Fi­nals, the TTFF re­ceived US$5.6 mil­lion from Fi­fa. As a re­sult, the play­ers ar­gued that there was an in­evitable com­mer­cial spin in that spon­sors paid large sums of mon­ey to be as­so­ci­at­ed with any of the teams reach­ing the fi­nals.