Harlem Strik­ers was award­ed the sixth po­si­tion in Tier II of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League and with it a ‘Big Six’ play­off spot af­ter the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion sanc­tioned Guaya Unit­ed for the use of an un­reg­is­tered play­er – Der­ron John.

Last Thurs­day, Guaya Unit­ed FC was giv­en a 1 p.m. dead­line to pro­vide de­tails and in­for­ma­tion about the trans­fer and ap­proval of strik­er Der­ron John, who had been the sub­ject of an on­go­ing bat­tle be­tween the south­east team and Harlem Strik­ers for the over­all sixth po­si­tion.

Both teams were locked on the same points and goal dif­fer­ence af­ter the fi­nal day of ac­tion in round one of the com­pe­ti­tion with Guaya get­ting the nod for the sixth po­si­tion based on a head-to-head com­par­i­son which put them among the six qual­i­fiers for the Big Six Play Off that was sched­uled to be­gin last week­end.

In the play­offs, Guaya was set to face Po­lice FC, but a protest lodged by Harlem Strik­ers forced the T&TFA to sus­pend the match un­til an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day night by Amiel Mo­hammed, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA, it mis­tak­en­ly stat­ed that John was suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred in­stead of un­suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred.

The re­lease stat­ed that: “The ini­tial re­quest to fa­cil­i­tate this trans­fer is dat­ed 11 Au­gust 2023. A cor­re­spon­dence to TTPFL Tier 1 and Tier 2 clubs dat­ed 16 Au­gust 2023, in­di­cat­ed that a Do­mes­tic Reg­is­tra­tion Win­dow will be opened from 17 Ju­ly 2023 to 27 Ju­ly 2023. We would like to in­vite Guaya Unit­ed to kind­ly pro­vide any de­tails and fur­ther in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to Mr John by no lat­er than 1 pm (AST) on 13 Sep­tem­ber 2023.”

How­ev­er, Randy Ha­gley, the Man­ag­er of Guaya Unit­ed not­ed that the re­quest for John was made be­tween mid-June to ear­ly Ju­ly which was well in­side the trans­fer win­dow and it was lat­er ap­proved by Jabloteh and put in­to the sys­tem for the lo­cal foot­ball fed­er­a­tion ap­proval with­in the Ju­ly 27 dead­line.

How­ev­er, the play­er was on­ly reg­is­tered on Au­gust 6 when the team played against FC Phoenix at the Guaya Recre­ation Ground in a match that end­ed 2-2. In that match, he could not play, as there was a grace pe­ri­od to sub­mit names for the game.

When con­tact­ed last Tues­day, Gre­go­ry Mc Sween, man­ag­er of Harlem Strik­ers, said it was not the con­cern of his club whether there was a blun­der in the reg­is­tra­tion or not, say­ing the fact that John was not reg­is­tered in time was all that mat­tered to them.

Fol­low­ing a four-mem­ber Spe­cial Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee meet­ing which in­clud­ed Alex­ia Romero (chair­woman), Sid­diq Man­zano (mem­ber), Samuel Hare­wood (mem­ber), and Ato Rock­cliffe (mem­ber) a de­ci­sion was tak­en to award the sixth po­si­tion to Harlem Strik­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to the me­dia re­lease date of Sep­tem­ber 16, and is­sued by Mon­zano: The com­mit­tee was pre­sent­ed with an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a trans­fer of a play­er name­ly Der­ron John, from San Juan Jabloteh to Guaya Unit­ed.

The dis­pute aris­es as Guaya Unit­ed re­quest­ed the trans­fer of Mr John af­ter the clo­sure of the Do­mes­tic Reg­is­tra­tion Win­dow “trans­fer win­dow” and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, in er­ror and with­out the req­ui­site ap­proval to sat­is­fy the pro­vi­sions of Ar­ti­cle 10.3 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League Reg­u­la­tions, 2023.

The re­lease con­tin­ued: Fol­low­ing the trans­fer, Mr. John went on to play a TTPFL Tier 2 match for Guaya Unit­ed against Bethel S.C. where he went on to score the de­ci­sive goal pro­pelling Guaya Unit­ed to the play­offs on goal dif­fer­ence.

It is undis­put­ed that Guaya Unit­ed is bound by the TT Pre­mier Foot­ball League Club Par­tic­i­pa­tion Con­tract signed by Mr Randy Ha­gley (Club Rep­re­sen­ta­tive) as well as the rel­e­vant Reg­u­la­tions and Code(s) of Con­duct con­tained with­in the said con­tract.

It is al­so undis­put­ed that Guaya Unit­ed sub­mit­ted their trans­fer re­quest for Mr John af­ter the trans­fer win­dow had al­ready closed.

To fall un­der the ex­cep­tion ex­pressed in Ar­ti­cle 10.3 as men­tioned above, the re­quest­ing club must sub­mit all rel­e­vant sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion in­clu­sive but not lim­it­ed to Con­tracts and/or ref­er­ences to the As­so­ci­a­tion to al­low for the same to be re­viewed and there­after ap­proved. This was not done on this oc­ca­sion.

Fail­ing to trans­fer/reg­is­ter Mr John with­in the trans­fer win­dow and not meet­ing the cri­te­ria es­tab­lished to qual­i­fy for the ex­cep­tion to the rule in Ar­ti­cle 10.3, Mr John is deemed to be an in­el­i­gi­ble play­er.

Rule 19.1 of the FI­FA Dis­ci­pli­nary Code 2023 states that if a play­er field­ed in a match and/or com­pe­ti­tion is de­clared in­el­i­gi­ble, the FI­FA ju­di­cial bod­ies, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the in­tegri­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion con­cerned, may im­pose any ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures.

Guaya Unit­ed has re­spond­ed on Sun­day to the TTFA Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee re­port dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 16 with a let­ter ad­dressed to the gen­er­al sec­re­tary Amiel Mo­hammed stat­ing that: “The rul­ing, dat­ed 16th Sep­tem­ber 2023, is­sued by the sec­re­tary of the Spe­cial Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee, At­tor­ney Sid­diq Man­zano with the sub­ject - Trans­fer and Field­ing of Mr Der­ron John (Guaya Unit­ed) seeks to prove that Guaya Unit­ed trans­ferred Mr Der­ron John from San Juan Jabloteh to Guaya Unit­ed with­out ap­proval, in­stead, the cor­re­spon­dence in­tro­duced it­self by con­tra­dict­ing the rul­ing of the com­mit­tee when it ad­mit­ted that the TTFA erred in the process, then, it went on to make state­ments to sul­ly the good name and char­ac­ter of Guaya Unit­ed, with no ba­sis or

prop­er ex­pla­na­tion to jus­ti­fy its rul­ing, be­cause there is none!”

The teams to con­test the ‘Big Six’ in­clude To­ba­go gi­ants FC Phoenix, who took the top spot on the stand­ings with 24 points from 10 match­es, and Queen’s Park in sec­ond po­si­tion with 23 points.

They are joined by third-placed Po­lice FC (19 points), Pe­tit Val­ley Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed (16), San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants (14), and Harlem Strik­ers (13).