Af­ter read­ing and see­ing pic­tures of the Ho­tel which is be­ing built by the man­age­ment of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, my first im­pres­sion was that the project could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed by teams, main­ly na­tion­al Foot­ball teams and/or for­eign teams vis­it­ing to play match­es. If I am right, then, the com­fort with re­gards to play­ers camps, rest pe­ri­od be­fore match­es and ad­e­quate pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice vis a vis treat­ment for all foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ty is a wel­com­ing ven­ture.

It has been sug­gest­ed the cost of the project, the sup­ply of fi­nances, the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments re­gard­ing the own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty and oth­er as­pects have been un­clear to the sports ad­min­is­tra­tive di­rec­tor­ship. There are ques­tions as to whether the gov­ern­ment grant­ed a lease arrange­ment to the TTFA or is the land in sue has been pur­chased with funds from the TTFA.

The re­cent pic­ture on the dai­ly News­pa­per which in­clud­ed many of the coun­try's na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion hi­er­ar­chy, ap­peared to the read­ers as though they are part of the process and if so, what role do they have to play in terms of man­age­ment, or been ten­ants from time to time, and who are the re­cip­i­ents and con­trollers of the pay­ment col­lec­tion.

For­give me for look­ing that far. It is sim­ply be­cause some of our pre­de­ces­sors have not been as clear in their op­er­a­tions when it comes to the fi­nanc­ing of any kind whether it be play­ers fees, coach­es' salaries, even of­fice work­ers.

The con­cept of hav­ing this type of ed­i­fice for the pur­pose which is list­ed above could be ben­e­fi­cial, pro­vid­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al path is clear in the eyes of the stake­hold­ers, many of whom are foot­ballers at all lev­els of play.

What is of more in­ter­est for the lover of the sport is to find the pos­i­tive link which will as­sist in the im­prove­ment of the game on the field and any ef­fort to abol­ish the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the per­for­mances which have been very vis­i­ble es­pe­cial­ly among the ju­nior pro­grammes and most im­por­tant­ly, the con­fus­ing state of our Pro­League, Su­per League and the zones which are the foun­da­tion of the lo­cal sport.

How will this project con­nect our ills in the sport? Is there a planned which will lead to the im­prove­ment of the game it­self? The ab­sence of a ho­tel was ac­tu­al­ly not the rea­son for the de­vel­op­ment of our game, de­spite the fact that the cry com­ing from the ho­tel de­ci­sion mak­ers is that this project will lead to the road of foot­ball progress.

The mem­o­ries of our in­volve­ment in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed FI­FA youth com­pe­ti­tions do not re­flect any sem­blance of pos­i­tive progress in our foot­ball, and that in­cludes the qual­i­ty of Sec­ondary School Foot­ball League (SS­FL) match­es. It is un­fair to lay the blame at the feet of the ac­tiv­i­ty on the field when the cadre of top-class coach­es is in the mi­nor­i­ty. I can iden­ti­fy with the num­ber of cours­es con­duct­ed at all lev­els, but the suc­cess of coach­ing is sim­ply a long-term project where all the per­sons who as­pire to wear the track Suits on the bench­es, must de­vote much more time ded­i­cat­ing them­selves to lis­ten­ing and prac­tis­ing the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal meth­ods which will help them to un­der­stand the trade much bet­ter.

Then there is the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of prin­ci­ples which of­fer the ad­min­is­tra­tive and man­age­ment guide­lines to bring some sta­bil­i­ty and recog­ni­tion how we do and ap­proach things that would be of ben­e­fit to the coun­try.

In this re­gard, I some­times won­der what was be­hind the in­tro­duc­tion of the Sports Com­pa­ny of TT in con­nec­tion with the role of Min­istry of Sports. I would have thought that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing that the day to day process of all sport in the coun­try can be mon­i­tored care­ful­ly and even com­mu­ni­cate with the As­so­ci­a­tions for the pur­pose of work­ing ac­cu­rate­ly with­in their con­sti­tu­tions, rules and reg­u­la­tions.

My feel­ing is sim­ply based up­on the op­er­a­tion of the min­istry as the lead­ers of our coun­try and not just be providers of fi­nan­cial hand­outs with­out hav­ing a de­tailed un­der­stand­ing about how they func­tion be­fore ex­tend­ing fund­ing from the trea­sury. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the prob­lems are many and a fifty or five hun­dred room ho­tel will cer­tain­ly not make a dif­fer­ence to the qual­i­ty of our Foot­ball or any of the NSOs if the ground­work is not done for all the stake­hold­ers to ben­e­fit.

How­ev­er, we shall be pa­tient but very ob­ser­vant as to the fu­ture of sport con­tin­ue to un­fold.