A lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port has been giv­en as the key rea­son for the with­draw­al of Ath­let­ic Club Port-of-Spain (AC PoS) from the 2026 T&T Women’s League Foot­ball (WoLF).

On Sun­day (June 14), AC PoS, coached by Gilbert Bateau, a for­mer T&T Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 FI­FA World Cup tech­ni­cal staff mem­ber, was sched­uled to face T&T Po­lice in the sec­ond match at the Ken Cooke Ground, St James Po­lice Bar­racks, St James.

How­ev­er, in a let­ter ad­dressed to the T&T WoLF man­age­ment sent by Ryan Nunes, own­er of the AC PoS club, it was stat­ed that the club would not be tak­ing any fur­ther part in the com­pe­ti­tion.

The let­ter stat­ed, “AC PoS re­grets to for­mal­ly ad­vise that we must with­draw from the tour­na­ment.

“Due to the ex­tend­ed length of our do­mes­tic sea­son and our cur­rent in­abil­i­ty to re­spon­si­bly fi­nance ad­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion at this time, we are not in a po­si­tion to par­tic­i­pate with­out com­pro­mis­ing our op­er­a­tional com­mit­ments.

“At the be­gin­ning of the sea­son we had bud­get­ed for two rounds, and giv­en the dif­fi­cul­ty of the econ­o­my, no fur­ther spon­sor­ship could be achieved.

“In ad­di­tion, we have not­ed re­cent pub­lic state­ments made by a coach from an­oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing team, which were in­ter­pret­ed as threat­en­ing to­ward our play­ers.

“Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion and in keep­ing with our du­ty of care to safe­guard all mem­bers of our club, we can­not ex­pose our ath­letes to an en­vi­ron­ment where their safe­ty or well-be­ing may be at risk. This cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion that is not ten­able for our par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that the league was ex­tend­ed from two rounds to three mid­way in the sea­son in an ef­fort to pro­vide more play­ing time for the play­ers and al­so to keep with­in the TTFA com­pli­ance pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, a for­mer mem­ber of AC PoS tech­ni­cal staff, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, was reached for com­ment and said the blame for the team with­draw­ing from the WoLF com­pe­ti­tions falls sole­ly on Nunes, who has failed in his oblig­a­tions to his play­ers and staff.

The for­mer staff mem­ber added, “The play­ers and staff mem­bers have not been paid, and pri­or to the last match, AC PoS man­age­ment was in­formed that the play­ers would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in any fur­ther match­es with­out be­ing paid their out­stand­ing salaries.

“There were al­so con­cerns raised that the club failed to pro­vide the prop­er train­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the women who, up un­til re­cent­ly, were us­ing the An­cil El­cock Ground in Cunu­pia as their train­ing ground and with­out the prop­er chang­ing room fa­cil­i­ties for the women and young girls on the team.”

The for­mer staff mem­ber said that at no point in time did the mem­bers of the team raise any con­cerns with re­gard to feel­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed by any oth­er coach’s com­ments and not­ed that it was be­ing used as a dis­trac­tion from the fac­tion that the club had failed in its du­ties to the play­ers and tech­ni­cal staff.

Go­ing for­ward, the for­mer staff mem­ber point­ed out that the sit­u­a­tion re­mains hope­ful in that the play­ers af­fect­ed will be al­lowed to join the oth­er teams still com­pet­ing in the league for the re­main­der of the sea­son.

Else­where, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Club San­do moved to the top of the stand­ings af­ter be­ing award­ed a win by de­fault over Pi­o­neers at the Ma­haica Oval, Point Fortin, push­ing their points tal­ly to 35 points from 16 match­es, one point ahead of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), while AC PoS is third with 33 points from 14 match­es and is await­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of their with­draw­al from the com­pe­ti­tion.

And in the open­ing match at St James, Trend­set­ter Hawks got two goals each from Hac­k­eemar Goodridge and Aaqi­la Vir­gil, while Jay­da Her­bert and Amee­da Bow­man al­so net­ted a 6-1 whip­ping of Ath­let­ic In­ter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my, which got its lone re­ply from Evan­ge­lene Far­fan.

Over in To­ba­go, Jew­els SC ex­tend­ed their lead at the top of the four-team stand­ings af­ter beat­ing Com­bined Ballerz 3-1 in the sec­ond match of a dou­ble-head­er at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let on Sun­day.

All the goals in the con­test came via Jew­els SC, with Al­liyah Bap­tiste, Ty’Kaiya Den­nis, and Leia-Marie Bal­four fir­ing in one each for the win­ners, while their team­mate Do­minique Scott con­ced­ed an own goal to put Com­bined Ballerz on the score sheet at 1-1.

The three points saw Jew­el SC car­ry their points tal­ly to 38 points from 15 match­es, 11 clear of To­ba­go Chi­cas, who bat­tled to a goal­less draw with Black Pan­thers, with the lat­ter re­main­ing in the third spot and with an out­side chance of tak­ing the sec­ond spot in­to the na­tion­al play­offs.

Sun­day’s (June 14) re­sults

Trinidad Group

Club San­do 3 vs Point Pi­o­neers 0 - won by de­fault

Trend­set­ter Hawks 6 (Hac­k­eemar Goodridge 2, Aaqi­la Vir­gil 2, Jay­da Her­bert, Amee­da Bow­man) vs AIA 1 (Evan­ge­lene Far­fan)

Po­lice FC vs AC PoS, Ken Cooke Grd, St James Po­lice Bar­racks, St James - Did not play

To­ba­go Group

Black Pan­thers 0 vs To­ba­go Chi­cas 0

Jew­els SC 3 (Al­liyah Bap­tiste, Ty’Kaiya Den­nis, Leia-Marie Bal­four) vs Com­bined Ballerz 1 (Do­minique Scott o.g)

T&T WoLF lat­est stand­ings

Trinidad Group

Pos*Teams*P*W*D*L*GD*Pts

1. Club San­do*16*10*5*1*41*35

2. UTT*16*11*1*4*29*34

3. AC PoS*14*10*3*1*21*33

4. Po­lice FC*14*5*3*6*-14*18

5. Trend­set­ter Hawks*13*6*1*6*5*19

6. Pt Fortin Pi­o­neers*13*2*0*11*-24*6

7. AIA*15*0*1*14*-58*1

To­ba­go Group:

Pos*Team*P*W*D*L*GD*Pts

1. Jew­els FC*15*12*2*1*34*38

2. To­ba­go Chi­cas*15*8*3*4*12*27

3. Black Pan­thers*15*3*7*5*-2*16

4. Com­bined Ballerz*15*0*2*13*-44*2