Ex­as­per­at­ed is the most ac­cu­rate ad­jec­tive to de­scribe my thoughts when writ­ing about this lo­cal foot­ball saga. But when one is down, few peo­ple try to help him/her back up or give words of en­cour­age­ment to stand on two feet again. I am sure that must be the feel­ing of William Wal­lace who is un­doubt­ed­ly per­sona non gra­ta with FI­FA and the Min­is­ter of Sports.

When one thinks it can’t pos­si­bly get worse as bat­tling FI­FA is bad enough, thrown in­to the mix is the Min­is­ter of Sports, and based on her re­cent com­ments to the me­dia, I find her con­fus­ing. On one hand, a few weeks ago, she said, to para­phrase, she rather not get in­volved in any FI­FA vs T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) bat­tle be­cause two years ago, she was told by the then TTFA pres­i­dent to stay out of FI­FA and TTFA busi­ness.

Yet, she comes out to the me­dia to de­liv­er a mes­sage to stake­hold­ers and says that she recog­nis­es FI­FA’s im­posed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee. Per­haps they don’t rep­re­sent any­one. To be hon­est, I wish when it comes to foot­ball the Min­is­ter could sim­ply refuse to com­ment on the mat­ter. At least she will be con­sis­tent then.

Re­mem­ber Wal­lace is fight­ing, what he be­lieves along with many oth­ers, to be an un­just act and abuse of pow­er by FI­FA against a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed body just three months in­to its op­er­a­tions.

Mean­while, an­oth­er let­ter sur­faces from an anony­mous staff mem­ber ask­ing Wal­lace to do the “hu­mane” and “ra­tio­nal” thing and con­cede the lo­cal foot­ball body’s bank ac­counts to the FI­FA-im­posed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Strange­ly enough, the let­ter was both un­signed and un­dat­ed and not sent di­rect­ly to Wal­lace, but in­stead to se­lect­ed me­dia hous­es. Cer­tain in­sid­ers have sent me sug­ges­tions about who they think the let­ter orig­i­nat­ed from.

When one of those in­di­vid­u­als was con­front­ed and asked this sim­ple ques­tion, “Did you write the let­ter, and were there oth­er staff mem­bers in­volved?”, the in­di­vid­ual re­spond­ed, “Lol”.

Now, I can’t speak for any­one, but if I had writ­ten the let­ter I would have per­haps said: “Yes, I wrote it be­cause I am frus­trat­ed and need my salary now”. I can cer­tain­ly em­pathise with the em­ploy­ees’ frus­tra­tions, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times. I al­so un­der­stand Wal­lace’s fight and I am con­fi­dent that should any of those work­ers find them­selves in his po­si­tion fight­ing for a cause, they may well pur­sue a sim­i­lar type of ac­tion.

What is even more puz­zling to me is if First Cit­i­zens is not fa­cil­i­tat­ing any dis­burse­ments un­til this whole mess is set­tled by court or­der, then why doesn’t the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee do the “hu­mane” and “ra­tio­nal” thing and pay the em­ploy­ees?

Sure­ly FI­FA can make a cheque out to the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee in or­der for the TTFA staff to re­ceive their salaries. Un­less the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee mem­bers are not be­ing paid and do­ing this for the love of foot­ball? I high­ly doubt this is the case as the pay­ment of their salaries may be the least of their con­cerns.

FI­FA must be aware, through the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, of what is hap­pen­ing here with the TTFA’s bank ac­count. I cer­tain­ly do not know if any con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for that type of sit­u­a­tion to arise, but this must be treat­ed as an ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stance.

As ex­pect­ed, Wal­lace is be­ing paint­ed as the big, bad wolf for not want­i­ng to give salaries to the staff. But, I am al­so made to un­der­stand in the let­ter writ­ten by the anony­mous staff mem­ber that the of­fice staff do not qual­i­fy for the gov­ern­ment’s salary re­lief pro­gramme and have al­so been re­fused as­sis­tance through the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Ser­vice (NIS) be­cause of the non-pay­ment of statu­to­ry de­duc­tions from their em­ploy­er, TTFA. This was be­cause the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion al­leged­ly with­held ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$4 mil­lion payable to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and the Board of In­land Rev­enue for NIS, Pay As You Earn (PAYE), and health sur­charge for its em­ploy­ees be­tween No­vem­ber 2017 and No­vem­ber 2019.

The prob­lem I have is sim­ple - why is there sup­pos­ed­ly no one in­ves­ti­gat­ing these ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties? Sure­ly if the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee had any con­science, and I be­lieve that they are all per­sons with high in­tegri­ty, they would be in­ves­ti­gat­ing cer­tain is­sues that the foot­balling pub­lic need re­solved. I keep read­ing about this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee say­ing that they are not on a witch hunt.

No one is ask­ing for this, but what is be­ing asked is whether there were mis­de­meanors lead­ing up to March (or was it Jan­u­ary?) 2020 when they were ap­point­ed. They would then have a du­ty to the foot­ball-lov­ing pub­lic of T&T to come clean and let peo­ple know what they have in­ves­ti­gat­ed and what is go­ing to be done about it.

I am sick of hear­ing the old adage of “Let’s for­get the past” as this is a new chap­ter for foot­ball. How can any­one just shut their eyes and move for­ward when ap­par­ent­ly there is so much stink dirt to be dug up with­in our foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion? Does any­one care about just how we have found our­selves in this po­si­tion? Are peo­ple sug­gest­ing that we sim­ply for­get what has hap­pened over the last four years to den­i­grate our foot­ball in­to va­grancy sta­tus both on and off the field?

How can any right-think­ing in­di­vid­ual take up a post and not go in­to the archives and ask ba­sic ques­tions like where was all this mon­ey spent? Who were con­tracts giv­en to and why? What pro­cure­ment process was fol­lowed? How were ap­point­ments made? Why were de­tails of the whole ‘Home of Foot­ball’ project kept such a big se­cret and why was the work­man­ship deemed shod­dy?

Per­haps, I am very wrong and the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is very qui­et­ly be­hind the scenes do­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Maybe on one sun­ny day, we will see a news con­fer­ence where all will be re­vealed as to why our foot­ball has been in a dark, ter­ri­ble hole for the last four years. On­ly then will I be able to breathe a sigh of re­lief and say let's all move on with our foot­ball. Wish­ful think­ing at its best.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.