Dear Ed­i­tor

The re­cent state­ment by for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) William Wal­lace, to me, was just a list of poor ex­cus­es that left us with more ques­tions than an­swers.

While I think Wal­lace did make some un­forced er­rors and mis­takes out of naivety, he has con­firmed that some of his ac­tions know­ing­ly dis­re­gard­ed the TTFA board and pos­si­bly his Unit­ed TTFA col­leagues.

Wal­lace con­firms that he ap­point­ed Pe­ter Miller be­cause of a promise made to Ray­mond Tim-Kee (de­ceased) and as a re­ward to Miller for his sup­port with the TTFA elec­tion cam­paign lea­d­i­ung up to the No­vem­ber 24, 2019 an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM).

While Wal­lace’s loy­al­ty to for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Tim-Kee’s mem­o­ry is ad­mirable, his loy­al­ty should al­ways be to the sport and his board and the promis­es he made to the stake­hold­ers who elect­ed him to lead. One al­so has to ask the ques­tion of the US$30,000 bonus promised and if this is TTFA mon­ey be­ing spent on the Unit­ed TTFA cam­paign?

It seems very clear that a promise may have been made to both Pe­ter Miller and Ter­ry Fen­wick that they would be re­ward­ed with con­tracts should Unit­ed TTFA win the elec­tion.

Both ap­par­ent­ly, were in­stru­men­tal in de­vel­op­ing mar­ket­ing strate­gies and al­leged spon­sors. As long time friends, they had worked to­geth­er on pre­vi­ous ven­tures in­clud­ing Fen­wick’s first coach­ing po­si­tion at Northamp­ton Town in Eng­land. Miller then helped to ne­go­ti­ate Fen­wick’s na­tion­al team con­tract.

While Fen­wick may have been the best coach­ing op­tion any­way, there cer­tain­ly ap­pears to have been some lat­i­tude award­ed to him, not least the abil­i­ty for him to have his con­tract drawn up by his own le­gal ad­vis­er. It ap­pears that the board ap­proved con­tract was to­tal­ly dis­re­gard­ed by Wal­lace.

But the fact that Miller was ap­point­ed to work for TTFA and was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing for Fen­wick could have been re­gard­ed as a con­flict of in­ter­est. Red flags should have been raised and strin­gent checks on their col­lab­o­ra­tion should have tak­en place.   

Kei­th Look-Loy and the rest of the Unit­ed TTFA was metic­u­lous and re­lent­less in pur­suit of the for­mer pres­i­dent David John-William for what they termed pos­si­ble wrong­do­ings and right­ful­ly so, but where were the sim­i­lar traits to run the af­fairs of the As­so­ci­a­tion. “who was guard­ing the guards?” Why did the mem­bers of Unit­ed TTFA al­low con­tracts to be is­sued with­out any over­sight?

For such a close-knit group of com­rades, wasn’t any­one in­ter­est­ed in what was be­ing of­fered?

Ques­tions must al­so be asked of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary who ap­par­ent­ly blind­ly co-signed these con­tracts with­out any ref­er­ence to the board’s re­quire­ments and pri­or de­ci­sions tak­en. But then, he was award­ed a con­tract that al­so went against the board’s spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions, so per­haps that was mo­ti­va­tion enough to not raise any protests or bring this to the at­ten­tion of the three vice pres­i­dents.

De­spite sev­er­al emails from board mem­bers many of them (my­self in­clud­ed) seek­ing and re­quest­ing trans­paren­cy in vet­ting all con­tracts be­fore be­ing signed all fell on deaf ears and in some in­stances met with an­i­mos­i­ty.

It is abun­dant­ly clear to me, af­ter wit­ness­ing events un­der both David John-Williams and William Wal­lace that there are op­er­a­tional loop­holes in the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion that need amend­ing im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore go­ing for­ward.

The board should have a pow­er of ve­to over all con­tracts and oblig­a­tions agreed by the pres­i­dent or ex­ec­u­tive and every con­tract should be vet­ted by a TTFA le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive and viewed by the board be­fore be­ing hand­ed out in the fu­ture.

The re­quire­ment that a pres­i­dent should have a min­i­mum of three (3) years’ ex­pe­ri­ence of lo­cal foot­ball is not re­quired. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary is a re­dun­dant po­si­tion and should be re­placed by a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) who is legal­ly re­spon­si­ble for the ac­tions of the ex­ec­u­tive.

The TTFA board need not be the rub­ber stamp au­thor­i­ty, but in­stead should be guid­ing the long term strate­gies of the as­so­ci­a­tion. The cur­rent board struc­ture is too large, with board meet­ings reg­u­lar­ly run­ning more than five hours long. An op­er­a­tional sev­en-mem­ber board in­clud­ing on­ly three TTFA mem­bers along with three in­de­pen­dent board mem­bers should be cre­at­ed with cer­tain busi­ness skills re­quired such as a mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor, le­gal ad­vis­er and med­ical ad­vis­er.

The man­age­ment of TTFA should be stream­lined, with greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ties al­lowed, yet more in­tense over­sight in­voked, with gross mis­con­duct such as we have wit­nessed re­cent­ly at­tract­ing se­vere penal­ties.

In the rush to re­move David John-Williams, we have learned harsh lessons. But foot­ball is a game where you can learn from your mis­takes and re­turn stronger than ever. Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball has just en­dured an em­bar­rass­ing thrash­ing. It’s now time to take what we have learned, build a sol­id foun­da­tion, and get back to win­ning ways.

Brent San­cho

Own­er Cen­tral FC

Chair­man T&T Pro League, Ag.

TTFA Board Di­rec­tor