In what was de­scribed as a very cor­dial and ma­ture gath­er­ing of the mem­ber­ship of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), the meet­ing vot­ed for the re­in­state­ment of the FI­FA ap­point­ed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to re­sume its con­trol and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the lo­cal sports dur­ing a vir­tu­al Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) on Sun­day.

The meet­ing was chaired by Richard Fer­gu­son in the ab­sence of em­bat­tled pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his two vice pres­i­dents - Clynt Tay­lor and Joseph Sam Phillip, who made good on their writ­ten promise not to at­tend.

How­ev­er, in their ab­sence, 38 of 47 del­e­gates en­ti­tled to vote, ap­point­ed Fer­gu­son, who con­test­ed the No­vem­ber 24 pres­i­den­cy of the TTFA and lost in the first round, to chair the meet­ing af­ter he was nom­i­nat­ed by Cale­do­nia Mor­vant rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ja­mal Shabazz and sec­ond­ed by Howard Spencer of the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SFA) to do so. He was unan­i­mous­ly giv­en the nod.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was in­formed that the meet­ing which got off to a late start but com­plet­ed its sin­gle agen­da item - Dis­cus­sions re: The way for­ward - FI­FA sus­pen­sion, by noon fol­low­ing a mo­tion which was moved by Os­mond Down­er, the T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees (T&TFRA) rep­re­sen­ta­tive which read: "Be it re­solved that, in view of the pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion that the TTFA now finds it­self, this ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing of the TTFA de­cides that the way for­ward for the TTFA is for the TTFA to ful­ly com­ply with its oblig­a­tion as a mem­ber of FI­FA, recog­nis­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of the FI­FA ap­point­ed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, and bring­ing its own statutes in line with the FI­FA Statutes, and to ful­ly co­op­er­ate with the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee in the ful­fil­ment of its man­date as stat­ed in FI­FA's let­ter of March 17, 2020. Be it fur­ther re­solved that all court mat­ters ex­ist­ing be­tween the TTFA and FI­FA shall be im­me­di­ate­ly brought to a stop".

The mo­tion was sec­ond­ed by Kei­th Jef­fer­ys of Cen­tral FC with 33 del­e­gates vot­ing in favour of it, while three del­e­gates, when called up­on to vote, did not re­spond. The To­ba­go FA's Ter­ry Jopseh and the San­ta Rosa FC rep­re­sen­ta­tive ab­stained.

Mean­while, the let­ter sent to pres­i­dent Wal­lace on Thurs­day by Kieron Ed­wards, the pres­i­dent of the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) re­quest­ing that he an­swers 19 ques­tions which in­clud­ed how he in­tends to pay the salaries of coach­es, of­fice staff and oth­er con­tract­ed of­fi­cials like Pe­ter Miller, the TTFA's mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive and how the TTFA debt $70 mil­lion will be cleared, but is­sue did not come up since Wal­lace was not present. Nei­ther did the vote of no-con­fi­dence in the pres­i­dent and his vice two pres­i­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to Down­er, "There was no need to move such a mo­tion since the agen­da did make pro­vi­sion for it and on­ly the con­sti­tu­tion can ad­dress it.

The meet­ing al­so di­rect­ed Fer­gu­son, a busi­ness­man and the own­er of Ter­minix La Horquat­ta Rangers FC and Boni Bish­op, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of T&TFRA to write Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee in­form­ing his about the mem­ber­ship de­ci­sion and that the let­ter must be de­liv­ered by 4 pm on Tues­day.

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 in­to lim­bo.

The law­suit, brought by Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA team, which al­so in­clud­ed for­mer foot­ball ex­ec­u­tives, T&T Su­per League pres­i­dent Kei­th Look Loy and An­tho­ny Har­ford, the pres­i­dent of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA), 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.

The meet­ing which al­so had 13 ob­servers, al­so de­cid­ed to ad­dress the Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion on Fri­day in which it or­dered that the TTFA pays FI­FA le­gal cost in the ju­ris­dic­tion ap­peal mat­ter which FI­FA won, at an­oth­er meet­ing.

On Sat­ur­day, 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 TTFA 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."

FI­FA sus­pend­ed the TTFA on Sep­tem­ber 24 (T&T Re­pub­lic Day) from all foot­ball events and ac­tiv­i­ties un­der FI­FA and de­mand­ed that the TTFA Statutes comes in line with FI­FA's own be­fore the sus­pen­sion is lift­ed.

In the event, that the sus­pen­sion is not lift­ed by ei­ther FI­FA or the CAS by 5 pm on De­cem­ber 18, T&T will be re­placed by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as the next high­est-ranked team based on per­for­mances dur­ing the 2019 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League.