The race for the pres­i­den­cy of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion be­gan in earnest yes­ter­day with last year's beat­en can­di­date Clynt Tay­lor look­ing like a strong choice to take over the reins of lo­cal foot­ball.

The Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (CFA) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al has been qui­et­ly putting to­geth­er an equal­ly strong team of pro­fes­sion­als he be­lieves is trust­wor­thy, ca­pa­ble and com­pe­tent, has the in­ter­est of the sport at heart and are guid­ed by the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. He did not name any mem­bers of his slate but promis­es it will be a gen­uine group of peo­ple, who will pro­vide the sport with the boost it needs at this time.

Ac­cord­ing to Tay­lor "Un­der the cur­rent pres­i­dent David John-Williams, we have seen ab­solute­ly noth­ing pos­i­tive tak­ing place."

"What foot­ball needs now is a change. It needs peo­ple who gen­uine­ly care about it and un­der­stand pro­grammes and process­es, or some­one who can put down a prop­er man­age­ment sys­tem and put it on par with in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. If I were vot­ed in­to of­fice, I would im­me­di­ate­ly se­lect a team of qual­i­fied per­sons in law and fi­nance etc to deal with the pletho­ra of fi­nan­cial and le­gal is­sues the as­so­ci­a­tion face at this time. We need peo­ple who can sit and talk to peo­ple, some­one who is un­der­stand­ing" Tay­lor ex­plained.

The TTFA An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tion of of­fi­cers is card­ed to be held no lat­er than the last day in No­vem­ber this year, ac­cord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion. John-Williams, the in­cum­bent is al­ready brac­ing for a chal­lenge, hav­ing faced a bar­rage of ques­tions and le­gal is­sues from var­i­ous mem­bers in the fra­ter­ni­ty, in­clud­ing mem­bers with­in his Board of Di­rec­tors.

Un­der John-Williams, the long-await­ed but now con­tro­ver­sial Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main Cou­va was con­struct­ed. And the em­bat­tled foot­ball boss views it as a so­lu­tion to many of his as­so­ci­a­tion's fi­nan­cial woes.

Un­der John-William' lead­er­ship al­so came a stig­ma of dic­ta­tor­ship, lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing mat­ters re­lat­ed to the home of foot­ball.

There were al­so many le­gal wran­gles that took place un­der John-Williams' reign, such as the T&T Fut­sal team tri­umph in the court that earned them more than $.5 mil­lion, Kei­th Look Loy's vic­to­ry in get­ting the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion to open its books on all the mat­ters re­lat­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial home of foot­ball, among many oth­ers.

Apart from Tay­lor and John-Williams, Ray­mond Tim Kee, the for­mer pres­i­dent is bid­ding for a re­turn to the of­fice to com­plete the work he start­ed be­tween 2012-2015. Guardian Me­dia Sports al­so learnt that Tony Har­ford, the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent is al­so set to throw his hat in­to the ring, while Sel­by Browne and Ramesh Ramd­han, both of whom con­test­ed the pres­i­den­cy back in 2015, will not be go­ing up.

Ramd­han said yes­ter­day that though he will not be con­test­ing the elec­tions, he is in­clined to throw his sup­port be­hind the can­di­date he be­lieves can take the sport for­ward.

Kelvin Jack, the for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er for the 2006 World Cup So­ca War­riors team, is al­so set to throw his hat in the ring, but Guardian Me­dia Sports was told that his can­di­da­cy could be in doubt due to re­stric­tions out­lined in ar­ti­cle 34 of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion.

Please put in a Box

Ar­ti­cle 34 (6) of the Con­sti­tu­tion which states that "Any can­di­date wish­ing to be­come a memm­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors shall ful­fill the fol­low­ing el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria- (1) can­di­dates must have been ac­tive in foot­ball for at least three years dur­ing the five years pre­ceed­ing the elec­tions. This ac­tiv­i­ty must have been per­formed in a man­age­r­i­al or a sim­i­lar po­si­tion in the ter­ri­to­ry of the Re­pub­lic of T&T."