Nigel Si­mon

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Anil Roberts says prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion from the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion is the rea­son for the de­lay in pay­ments to mem­bers of the So­ca War­riors tech­ni­cal staff and play­ers. A Guardian ex­clu­sive yes­ter­day re­vealed that mem­bers of the se­nior team (36 play­ers) and tech­ni­cal staff, head­ed by Rus­sell Lat­apy are await­ing pay­ments for 13 match­es dat­ing back to Ju­ly up to the just con­clud­ed Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup Fi­nals in Mar­tinique. Speak­ing at his Aber­crom­by Street head of­fice yes­ter­day, Roberts blamed the T&TFF for the late pay­ments as his Min­istry was still await­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion. He said: "I'm yet to re­ceive doc­u­men­ta­tion that is suit­able for the Min­istry to dis­perse fund­ing for the salaries. 'We got a gen­er­al e-mail which was too su­per­fi­cial to be con­sid­ered for any­thing. It was sent by the man­ag­er David Muham­mad and not from the T&TFF of­fi­cial­ly.

"I asked them (T&TFF) over three months ago for the con­tracts of all the tech­ni­cal staff and so on so that we could dou­ble check fig­ures and see what is owed and what is paid and then put it through the process, but we have not seen a con­tract as yet." Roberts said his Min­istry need­ed a break down of how much is owed to the play­ers per match and a grand to­tal. "To­day (yes­ter­day) I spoke with the man­ag­er and he sent me an e-mail. How­ev­er I told him that can on­ly be used for our prepara­to­ry work but we have to get some doc­u­men­ta­tion of­fi­cial­ly from the T&TFF. "Ob­vi­ous­ly I' m not sure if T&TFF pres­i­dent Oliv­er Camps is aware of this so ob­vi­ous­ly he will have to ask his mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive be­cause that is all we are await­ing." Roberts dis­pelled the sug­ges­tion that the T&T play­ers un­der­per­formed at the Fi­nal be­cause they were not paid.

"I don't think our boys would go and un­der-per­form or play poor­ly or with­out pas­sion be­cause of mon­ey. "That has to be ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous. Our guys have more re­spect for the game than that and for them­selves and they cer­tain­ly have more re­spect than that for the coun­try. "They have nev­er used it as an ex­cuse. They gave their heart and soul but it did not pan out as we had hope, so now we have to go back to the draw­ing board and plan a way for­ward to qual­i­fy for Brazil 2014. "Once the pa­per work is in we have per­sons at the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T to start pro­cess­ing as we re­al­ly want to get their mon­ey in the short­est pos­si­ble time." Roberts, who in ear­ly No­vem­ber ex­pressed the view that coach Rus­sell Lat­apy should have his po­si­tion re­viewed if T&T failed to reach the Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup Fi­nals sur­pris­ing­ly stayed away from the is­sue.

In­stead, Roberts said he had spo­ken long ago and it was now an is­sue the T&TFF and its ex­ec­u­tive body will have to sit and dis­cuss with the coach and his staff. Roberts al­so ex­pressed the hope that the Eng­lish FA and fans do not take out their anger on the T&T play­ers for Fi­fa's vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er's fail­ure to sup­port their 2018 World Cup bid. Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, Camps said, "Any­time we have not paid salaries is be­cause we have not re­ceived mon­ey from Gov­ern­ment. Once we don't get the fund­ing, we can­not pay the play­ers." Asked how soon the play­ers can ex­pect to be re­ward­ed, Camps said a meet­ing was ex­pect­ed this week­end but has now been pushed back. "We had sched­uled a meet­ing for Sat­ur­day but too many mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive would have been ab­sent due to an­oth­er en­gage­ment so we are hop­ing to have the meet­ing some time next week to iron out a few things. "But rest as­sured we are hop­ing to give the play­ers what is due to them be­fore Christ­mas.