A de­ci­sion by the chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, Robert Hadad, to reach out on Mon­day to At­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land, who is rep­re­sent­ing for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball coach Stephen Hart, to deal with monies owed to his client, is set to al­ter a po­si­tion to have the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) levied on.

On Mon­day Scot­land said they were heart­ened by the fact that some­one from the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee has fi­nal­ly reached out to them and opened com­mu­ni­ca­tion af­ter Hart had been ig­nored by the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion un­der David John-Williams for four years, al­though judge­ment was giv­en in his favour, last year.

Jus­tice Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well, in the High Court last No­vem­ber, ruled against the TTFA, to pay Hart the sum of US$742,444 (an es­ti­mat­ed TT$5 mil­lion) which rep­re­sents monies for un­paid wages, bonus­es etc, to Hart for his wrong­ful dis­missal back in 2016.

The TTFA was giv­en a dead­line date of May 9 to pay, but there was no com­mu­ni­ca­tion to Hart's lawyer, as the William Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion was re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee of Hadad, a di­rec­tor of the HAD­CO Group of Com­pa­nies, re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano, and at­tor­ney Judy Daniel, who is the deputy chair­man. Two oth­er per­sons are set to be ap­point­ed soon by the CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA.

Up­on recog­ni­tion that the ac­counts of the TTFA had been liq­ui­dat­ed in an al­most sim­i­lar le­gal mat­ter by then tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendall Walkes in Feb­ru­ary and his le­gal team, Scot­land had got­ten fed up of the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the TTFA to re­solve the mat­ter. He said they were con­sid­er­ing levy­ing on the "Home of Foot­ball" in Bal­main, Cou­va to re­ceive what was owed to his client.

“Re­mem­ber this is a judge­ment. It is un­for­tu­nate that it took five years, where you dis­missed a na­tion­al coach by not ho­n­our­ing the oblig­a­tions of his con­tract. I am heart­ened that some­one from the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee has reached out, and be­cause of this reach­ing out, we may amend our po­si­tion,” said Scot­land.

He did not say ex­act­ly what they were go­ing to do, say­ing they had a plan of how they were go­ing to pro­ceed and that his next step will be to fol­low pro­to­col by mak­ing con­tact with Hart who is based in Cana­da for guid­ance on how to pro­ceed. Scot­land said, "We are will­ing to see what pro­pos­als are made by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and have dis­cus­sions.” 

Mean­while, Hart told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day, that it all de­pends on the TTFA.

“Hadad reached out to me re­cent­ly and I told him that I pre­fer he talk to my lawyer so I guess he has. My lawyer has not got­ten on to me as yet. For me, it's ba­si­cal­ly what the TTFA comes up with. Let's just hope that things work out and foot­ball can get back on track.”

Up­on the rul­ing in No­vem­ber, which was soon be­fore the hot­ly-con­test­ed TTFA elec­tions at the "Home of Foot­ball", on­ly Wal­lace, Hart said, had reached out to him to try and set­tle the debt. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly it was part of a whop­ping $50 mil­lion debt which had crip­pled the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion and ba­si­cal­ly led to the ap­point­ment of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee by the sport's gov­ern­ing body.

Hart has been com­mend­ed for sta­bil­is­ing the coun­try's foot­ball dur­ing his tenure from 2013-2016, at which time he guid­ed the So­ca War­riors to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup, which in­clud­ed a 4-4 tie with foot­ball gi­ant Mex­i­co.

He al­so took the na­tion­al team to the fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing HEX stage of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers be­fore be­ing re­placed by Den­nis Lawrence, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er.