A dra­mat­ic week in T&T foot­ball end­ed with FI­FA ap­point­ed su­per­vi­sor Tyril Patrick writ­ing to the glob­al gov­ern­ing body on Sat­ur­day and turn­ing down the po­si­tion to run do­mes­tic foot­ball af­fairs un­til the FI­FA ap­point­ed nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee is named and as­sem­bled. This came less than 24 hours af­ter the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) le­gal team led by Matthew Gayle and Dr Emir Crowne wrote to Patrick on Fri­day in a fi­nal warn­ing in a let­ter threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion.

The three-page le­gal let­ter signed by Gayle, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports told Patrick, the cur­rent TTFA Fi­nance man­ag­er, “the con­sti­tu­tion of the TTFA makes no al­lowance for the ap­point­ment of your­self or any oth­er per­son to ‘over­see’ the day to day af­fairs of the TTFA as the FI­FA let­ter pur­ports.”

In say­ing that the FI­FA let­ter, which asked Patrick to over­see the day to day run­ning of lo­cal foot­ball, is of no le­gal ef­fect, the TTFA’s lawyers al­so threat­ened to re­turn force should there be any reper­cus­sions to lo­cal foot­ball. “Any at­tempts to hold foot­ball in Trinidad to ran­som with threats of fur­ther and/or more puni­tive steps will al­so be met with force­ful re­sis­tance by those who have re­tained us,” the le­gal let­ter read. It called up­on the TTFA fi­nance of­fi­cer to dis­tance him­self from tak­ing fur­ther steps to­wards act­ing on his FI­FA ap­point­ment.

FI­FA's let­ter from Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Fat­ma Samoura stat­ed: Un­der these se­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, and in ac­cor­dance with ar­ti­cle 8 para­graph 2 of the Fi­fa statutes (which fore­sees that ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions may, un­der ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, be re­moved from of­fice by the Fi­fa Coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant con­fed­er­a­tion and re­placed by a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od of time), the Bu­reau of the Coun­cil de­cid­ed, on March 17, to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee for the TTFA.

While Patrick was giv­en un­til 8 am on Mon­day to re­spond, he wrote on Sat­ur­day morn­ing to the TTFA’s at­tor­ney stat­ing, “I would like to con­firm via this email that I am no longer the in­ter­im man­ag­er at TTFA. I am no longer ac­cept­ing the ap­point­ment and I have in­formed FI­FA of my de­ci­sion.”

His de­ci­sion was laud­ed by for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er who told Guardian Me­dia Sports FI­FA was out to use Patrick. Warn­er said, “I think what Patrick did, in my hum­ble view, is the re­spect­ful thing of not tak­ing up FI­FA’s bait and al­low­ing him­self to be used and I ad­mire the young man. I don’t know him, but I ad­mire him now more than ever be­cause he re­fused to al­low him­self to be a pawn or a tool to be used by FI­FA and their agents.”

Patrick’s re­scind­ing of the ap­point­ment left the ques­tion as to who would run the dai­ly af­fairs of the TTFA af­ter a dra­mat­ic week which saw FI­FA dis­band the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body via let­ter dat­ed March 17, and ad­dressed to the TTH­FA's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han in its move to­wards in­stalling a nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee.

Ramd­han con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that he can go to the of­fice be­cause he was not re­moved by FI­FA. The elect­ed mem­bers along with the board of the TTFA were re­moved. Ramd­han is the head of the sec­re­tari­at and had been told to re­port to Patrick by the FI­FA but he re­frained from do­ing so.

Less than a day af­ter the an­nounce­ment was made by the FI­FA that it was send­ing in a nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee, the TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace an­nounced on Wednes­day that it was tak­ing the mat­ter to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS).

Wal­lace said on Wednes­day that, "We took a while to get over the shock, it was to­tal dis­be­lief. Since then we have pooled our re­sources to­geth­er and have de­cid­ed that this is in­jus­tice, it is dis­re­spect, it shows some po­lit­i­cal play go­ing on here to pro­tect, I don't know who, but clear­ly, this is un­prece­dent­ed when you look at what those com­mit­tees are set up to do. It is in cas­es of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es such as elec­tions. Our elec­tions were su­per­vised by the FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF, so there were no is­sues with the elec­tions, but now they are say­ing be­cause of the same fi­nan­cial de­fi­cien­cy that we point­ed out to them when they were here, they are now us­ing that as a rea­son, but we have gone be­yond that, we have put things in place."

Ramd­han said cer­tain pro­ce­dures need­ed to take place be­fore the mat­ter reached CAS. Af­ter the TTFA is­sued a let­ter to the FI­FA this week, it is un­der­stood the lo­cal body was not hap­py with its re­sponse and has since writ­ten to the FI­FA once again, giv­ing them un­til 8:30am on Mon­day to re­spond.

Ramd­han said, “We have to fol­low cer­tain pro­to­cols be­fore we take the mat­ter to CAS. We were not sat­is­fied with FI­FA’s re­sponse af­ter they took three days, so we have again writ­ten them and asked them to deal with the sub­stan­tive mat­ter of the let­ter.” The for­mal pro­ceed­ings to take the mat­ter to CAS could start as ear­ly as to­mor­row judg­ing on FI­FA’s re­sponse to the TTFA.

Gayle's let­ter al­so stat­ed that: "The prop­er mem­ber­ship of the ex­ec­u­tive of the TTFA there­fore con­sists of the fol­low­ing per­sons: William Wal­lace, Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick, Joseph Sam-Phillip, Kieron Ed­wards, Richard Quan Chan, Rayshawn Mars, Desmond Al­fred, Dwayne Thomas, Brent San­cho, Jamy­i­la Muham­mad, Phul­lip Fras­er, Joseph Tay­lor, Kei­th Look Loy (colec­tive­ly the "Du­ly Elect­ed Ex­ec­u­tive).

As such, the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed to run the TTFA’s dai­ly af­fairs, es­tab­lish a debt re­pay­ment plan, re­view and amend the TTFA Statutes to en­sure their com­pli­ance with the FI­FA Statutes and or­gan­ise and con­duct elec­tions of a new TTFA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for a four-year man­date.

On March 15, the TTFA closed its of­fice and told staff to stay at home for one week be­cause of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and re­port to work on March 23. A de­ci­sion was al­so tak­en to sus­pend all na­tion­al foot­ball team train­ing and screen­ing ses­sions un­til fur­ther no­tice.