A pos­si­ble cri­sis in lo­cal foot­ball has been avert­ed af­ter match of­fi­cials be­gan re­ceiv­ing pay­ments for De­cem­ber 2024 from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion on Thurs­day.

Ear­li­er this week, ref­er­ees claimed, when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports pri­vate­ly and on so­cial me­dia through lo­cal sport ac­counts, that a strike was im­mi­nent over the non-pay­ment of their fees. 

Prime among their con­cerns is the non-pay­ment of fees long over­due from Tier 1 and 2 of the 2023/2024 Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League sea­son.

Chair­man of the TTFA’s Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee, Os­mond Down­er, not­ed that the debt was in­her­it­ed from the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee’s tenure and, de­spite miss­ing a pre­vi­ous dead­line of De­cem­ber 31, 2024, pledged that the ref­er­ees would re­ceive their salaries from the cur­rent sea­son’s first month to­day.

In a lengthy in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports, dur­ing which he ex­plained the nexus of the debt in great de­tail, the TTFA’s 2nd vice pres­i­dent gave his as­sur­ance that he and the as­so­ci­a­tion will en­deav­our to en­sure match of­fi­cials are paid month­ly.

“The new dis­pen­sa­tion, to make sure things work right from now,” Down­er said, “we shall con­tin­ue that from now on so this mas­sive ar­rears will not ac­cu­mu­late.”

The for­mer T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said ways and means are be­ing sought to ad­dress the sev­er­al thou­sands of dol­lars owed to of­fi­cials.

Each match in­cludes six of­fi­cials; four ref­er­ees, a ref­er­ee’s as­ses­sor, and a match com­mis­sion­er; each group earns a to­tal of TT$2,400 per match.

Guardian Me­dia Sports can con­firm that just be­fore presstime the TTFA trans­ferred the ref­er­ee and as­ses­sor fees for the TTPFL games played in De­cem­ber 2024 and the Jew­els of the Caribbean Women’s Tour­na­ment. The pay­ments have been de­posit­ed in­to the re­spec­tive bank ac­counts of the of­fi­cials in­volved in these events.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to sources in­side the fra­ter­ni­ty, ref­er­ees are still await­ing pay­ments for the Re­pub­lic Bank Youth Cup, the Wolf League, and the G League, all of which end­ed in mid-2024.

The de­lay in set­tling these out­stand­ing pay­ments con­tin­ues to raise con­cerns with­in the ref­er­ee­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

The TTFA Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee is a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed, vol­un­tary statu­to­ry com­mit­tee of the TTFA.

It in­cludes chair­man Down­er, deputy chair­man Franklyn Phillip, North Zone’s Robin Mur­ray, South Zone’s Jag­ger­nauth Goolcha­ran, Cen­tral’s Ju­lian Dray­ton, East Zone’s Nigel Roberts, To­ba­go’s Men­tor Bap­tiste, Women’s Foot­ball rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lin­da Bram­ble-Thomp­son, and ref­er­ee’s head Joseph Tay­lor.