In last week's ar­ti­cle ("The em­per­or has no clothes") I wrote of the TTFA's dis­as­trous use of our na­tion­al teams to cre­ate il­lu­sions. I quote my­self, "The As­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly bet all its mar­bles on an in­ter­na­tion­al break­through to daz­zle the pub­lic and mask the mul­ti­tude of sins of com­mis­sion and omis­sion on the do­mes­tic front." The re­cent and pre­dictable elim­i­na­tion of our U17 teams, male and fe­male, in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing has val­i­dat­ed my words. The men's loss to Bar­ba­dos and their nar­cot­ic win against min­nows St Mar­tin, how­ev­er, were un­fore­seen and un­for­giv­able. I am not in­ter­est­ed in the disin­gen­u­ous ex­cus­es of team coach­es, de­void of any sense of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the col­lapse of our youth teams lies at the feet of the cur­rent TTFA ex­ec­u­tive.

With the Mer­ry Monarch ready to rule the streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go in three days, I could eas­i­ly ded­i­cate this en­tire col­umn to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val. For in­stance, how did those sup­pos­ed­ly es­teemed ca­lyp­so judges come up first­ly with the 40 Kaisosians to take part in the se­mi-fi­nals at Skin­ner Park, on­ly to ghost the most sea­soned Kaisosians when the Di­manche Gras fi­nals roll around at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day night? It takes a rare tal­ent to look at a mas­ter­piece and say, "No thanks, I pre­fer the rough draft.”

It was an ex­cit­ing end to a dom­i­nant per­for­mance by Grand Mas­ters, which saw them take top place in the fi­nals of the 8-Ball Pool League host­ed by the Pyra­mid Sports Bar in Gas­par­il­lo on Sun­day (Feb­ru­ary 8).

T&T’s Un­der-17 foot­ballers face a daunt­ing task to over­take their Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts, Mex­i­co, from 7 pm Thurs­day night if they are to have a chance of pro­gress­ing out of Group A as the win­ner in the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

The Heat­wave pair of Phillip Clarke and Josias Ve­lasquez sealed the top po­si­tions in the Elite and Un­der-23 Men cat­e­gories when the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion held its Ri­ad Race Cy­cle Chal­lenge from the South Oropouche Round­about to La Brea/Ves­signy and back at the week­end (Feb­ru­ary 7-8).

MUM­BAI, In­dia, Feb 11, CMC – Shai Hope has de­liv­ered a stark warn­ing to his West In­dies team­mates af­ter their 30-run vic­to­ry over Eng­land at the Wankhede Sta­di­um, stat­ing that there are no sec­ond chances in World Cup crick­et.

A dogged dis­play in both de­fence and at­tack but that efort still did not pre­vent T&T from slump­ing to a 2-1 loss to Mex­i­co in the fi­nal match in Group A of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day night.

MUM­BAI — In a clin­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al dis­play from the re­gion­al side, the West In­dies carved out a 30-run win over Eng­land in their Group C ICC Men’s T20 World Cup en­counter at the Wankhede Sta­di­um In­dia on Wednes­day.

As I watched for the fourth straight year – 2023, 2024, 2025 and now 2026 – con­tests in Car­ni­val judged by peo­ple, I re­call al­ways why I love sports more than arts be­cause un­less the ref­er­ee or um­pire has a stinker or two, nor­mal­ly those on the sport­ing field find a way to con­jure up a re­sult that at least sug­gests fair play and a gen­er­al re­ward for en­deav­our, with more of­ten than not ab­solute and un­wa­ver­ing skill com­ing to the fore­front in most re­sults. The fol­low­ing quotes are im­por­tant for life lessons at Car­ni­val time, I be­lieve.

He led the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro League through sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial chal­lenges. He had the skill set, knowl­edge and vi­sion.

MUM­BAI, In­dia — As the West In­dies head in­to their cru­cial matchup against Eng­land in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to­mor­row, head coach Daren Sam­my is bank­ing on his team’s pow­er hit­ting and a dis­ci­plined bowl­ing ef­fort to get them over the line.

Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der-17 men’s foot­ball team will look to keep their faint hopes of top­ping Group A of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers alive when they tack­le cel­lar-placed Sint Maarten in the open­ing match of a dou­ble-head­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Mon­day, from 4 pm.