Af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive blow in the T&T Ap­peal Court to his pres­i­den­cy of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), William Wal­lace will be called up­on Sun­day to sur­vive a 'Vote of No-con­fi­dence' when the mem­ber­ship meet in a vir­tu­al Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) on Sun­day. morn­ing.

How­ev­er, in the lat­est twist to this foot­ball saga which has been go­ing on since March, the em­bat­tled pres­i­dent will not be present. He is­sued a let­ter to the sports mem­ber­ship on Sat­ur­day ad­vis­ing them that he and his two re­main­ing vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor and Joseph Sam Phillip will not be at­tend­ing the EGM which he trigged on Oc­to­ber 15. He said in the let­ter that: "We shall not stand in your way."

Kieron Ed­wards, the pres­i­dent of the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) said that the mem­ber­ship had re­quest­ed an­swers to 19 ques­tions sent to the pres­i­dent on Thurs­day so he could pre­pare the an­swers for the mem­ber­ship at the meet­ing.

He said two of the ques­tions that Wal­lace will need to pro­vide an­swers for are: How the TTFA debt $70 mil­lion, will be cleared, and how he pro­pos­es to pay the salaries of coach­es, of­fice staff and oth­er con­tract­ed of­fi­cials, such as Pe­ter Miller, the TTFA's mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive?

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that of­fice staff has not been paid since Ju­ly, while the coach­es have not been paid since their ap­point­ments in De­cem­ber 2019 and Jan­u­ary this year.

On Fri­day, the Court of Ap­peal judges, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux ruled in FI­FA favour and over­turned the rul­ing by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in made on Oc­to­ber 13, there­by throw­ing the fu­ture of Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor and Joseph Sam Phillip in­to lim­bo.

The law­suit, brought by em­bat­tled TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive team, which al­so in­clud­ed vice pres­i­dent Su­san Joseph-War­rick be­fore she re­signed the post on Sep­tem­ber 25, con­tra­vened the TTFA's Con­sti­tu­tion, which pre­scribes that all dis­putes be­tween the TTFA and FI­FA should be dealt with by the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS), the Ap­pel­late judges con­clud­ed.

The Ap­peal Court, the high­est court in T&T, al­so or­dered the cash-strapped TTFA to pay the le­gal cost of FI­FA.

In fact, in his sum­ma­ry of the de­ci­sion, Judge Bereaux stat­ed that: "There is no ev­i­dence that William Wal­lace was not au­tho­rised by the Board to bring this ac­tion. That there can­not, there­fore, be es­tab­lished." which means that the cost is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the TTFA.

TTFA board mem­ber and the T&T Pro League act­ing chair­man Brent San­cho told Guardian Me­dia Sports that: "Just like the fi­nan­cial bur­den that is com­ing out of the uni­lat­er­al con­tracts signed by Wal­lace which is pos­si­bly cost­ing the FA close to $14 mil­lion and of course the im­mense fall out the TTFA is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­cause of him and his ego­tis­ti­cal cronies charge to­wards the high courts of Trinidad and To­ba­go, all with­out board ap­proval. This is yet again an ex­am­ple of a man that seems to be­lieve he is a lord on­to him­self. There is ab­solute­ly no doubt in my mind that the mem­ber­ship will be ac­tive­ly look­ing at tak­ing a le­gal course for breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ties. It is a must."

An­oth­er board mem­ber Richard Quan Chan of the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion said: "The mem­ber­ship need to take le­gal ac­tion against the Unit­ed TTFA team for the le­gal cost which the court or­dered the TTFA to pay FI­FA. The de­ci­sion to take le­gal ac­tion against FI­FA was a Unit­ed TTFA de­ci­sion and not a TTFA Board de­ci­sion. The TTFA should not be sad­dled with that cost since it was nev­er in­formed, gave ap­proval or was in­volved in such a de­ci­sion."

On May 18, the Unit­ed TTFA with­draw­ing the mat­ter from the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, and the same day the group of Wal­lace, vice pres­i­dents Tay­lor, Phillip and Joseph-War­rick with sup­port­ers Kei­th Look Loy, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Su­per League and An­tho­ny Har­ford, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA) filed pro­ceed­ings in the T&T High Court seek­ing prin­ci­pal­ly a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion of FI­FA to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and pur­port­ing to re­move the TTFA’s du­ly elect­ed of­fi­cers was null and void and of no ef­fect.

How­ev­er, Fri­day's rul­ing has al­so put in doubt to­day's EGM to de­cide on the fu­ture of the sport in T&T since it squashed Judge Gob­in's rul­ing on Oc­to­ber 13, but FI­FA's Sep­tem­ber 24 sus­pen­sion to date re­mains in ef­fect and FI­FA has al­so de­mand­ed that the TTFA Statutes comes in line with FI­FA's own be­fore the sus­pen­sion is lift­ed.

The mem­ber­ship will first dis­cuss the sta­tus and le­gal­i­ty of to­day's meet­ing be­fore pro­ceed­ing with the lone agen­da item — 1. Dis­cus­sions re: the way for­ward - FI­FA sus­pen­sion.