Half the pay­ment of March salaries was made to Tier 1 cham­pi­ons of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League AC Port-of-Spain Tuesday (April 15), which ef­fec­tive­ly en­sures that the club will take the field to­mor­row in a cru­cial clash against ta­ble top­pers De­fence Force.

But now club own­er Ryan Nunes wants to set­tle the is­sue of their for­feit­ed match against MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot at the Ari­ma Velo­drome last Fri­day (April 11) as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple, say­ing he in­tends to take le­gal ad­vice to en­sure they are sat­is­fied.

Nunes said his play­ers were en­raged af­ter the promised pay­ment of salaries did not come through last Fri­day, fol­lowed by a de­ci­sion of the league to hand Cen­tral FC the win, com­pris­ing three goals and as many points. Nunes, a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion which cel­e­brat­ed its first an­niver­sary on Sun­day, con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia Sports that half pay­ment of wages was paid.

“We have re­ceived half the salary, and I know for sure that the ma­jor­i­ty of them who I con­tact­ed have been paid. I don’t know when the bal­ance of the pay­ment will ar­rive; we don’t have any in­for­ma­tion on that, but what we as a club have done is that we have gone to the bank to try and bor­row the mon­ey to set­tle them. I re­alise that I can’t re­ly on the sit­u­a­tion of the FA if mon­ey is late, so I just need to han­dle it on my own, but in­fo on oth­er clubs’ down­ing tools is news to me,” Nunes ex­plained.

He not­ed fur­ther, “ Nor­mal­ly the FA is sup­posed to pay the play­ers di­rect­ly by the Sport Com­pa­ny’s rules or pro­ce­dures, but up to Mon­day 1 pm, the mon­ey was not re­ceived by the play­ers, and when I called Yale An­toine, he told me that they sent the mon­ey to the club ac­count and not the play­ers, but they didn’t in­form me. And when I checked the ac­count, the mon­ey was there, and then I for­ward­ed the mon­ey to the play­ers, so the play­ers re­ceived the mon­ey.”

“There has been no dis­cus­sion from last week about the FA pay­ing the oth­er clubs or the bal­ance of the mon­ey for us,” Nunes said.

The League’s de­ci­sion to hand Cen­tral FC the match did not go down too well with Nunes. He told Guardian Me­dia that fair­ness must pre­vail in the de­ci­sion of his club, whose play­ers stood up for their rights.

He said, re­gard­ing the for­fei­ture, “We are send­ing an­oth­er re­quest for a meet­ing be­cause we be­lieve that he (Kieron Ed­wards) or I need to re­cuse our­selves from the sit­u­a­tion and have a com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to de­cide on for­fei­ture be­cause it is not a good op­ti­cal look that Cen­tral FC, the club that he con­trols, is the on­ly club that has been paid and that all the oth­er clubs are suf­fer­ing. And then he has a prob­lem de­fer­ring our game be­cause our play­ers can’t eat prop­er­ly or can’t come to train­ing.”

He added, “It’s not that they’re be­ing dis­re­spect­ful or re­bel­lious; they’re ex­press­ing their views, and we have to re­spect their views, and in this case, I sup­port­ed their de­ci­sion.”

“I am hop­ing that we get a meet­ing to­day to have some di­a­logue to dis­cuss what the so­lu­tion could be, and if not, have it re­ferred to a com­mit­tee to de­cide so that there would be some im­par­tial­i­ty and in­de­pen­dent think­ing. And if it’s not sat­is­fac­to­ry, then we may have to es­ca­late it through the courts or CON­CA­CAF,” Nunes con­clud­ed.

AC Port-of-Spain is fifth in the 12-team stand­ings with 26 points, with Cen­tral FC in sec­ond on 31 and the De­fence Force 12 points ahead on 43 points in po­si­tion one. Mean­while, when Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to Ed­wards yes­ter­day, he con­firmed that the to­tal pay­ment of sub­ven­tions to AC Port-of-Spain for the sea­son has been made al­ready, not­ing that the club’s is­sue with salary pay­ments is self-in­flict­ed.

“AC Port-of-Spain up to the time of the game made an ad­di­tion­al re­quest for funds which we could not help them with, but the whole sit­u­a­tion with AC Port-of-Spain is an in­ter­nal one, which is why it didn’t have a boy­cott of any league. It was a side that could not field their team for a game, so it’s not a TTFA or a Min­istry of Sports sit­u­a­tion; it is a strict AC Port-of-Spain club is­sue, which they’ve been hav­ing, as play­ers would have not­ed that they have been hav­ing that prob­lem for some time, since last sea­son,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

He added, “We have a great re­la­tion­ship with the Min­istry of Sports; our rec­on­cil­i­a­tions were on­go­ing, which we sort­ed out, and we con­tin­ue to work with the min­istry to as­sist with clubs when it comes to sub­ven­tions and oth­er parts of the league. The Min­istry of Sports gives $3 mil­lion a sea­son to help with sub­ven­tions and oth­er parts of it. TTFA al­so, through oth­er spon­sor­ships, makes up the bal­ance of sub­ven­tions for the clubs, but this is not the en­tire pay­ment of salaries for play­ers. The clubs them­selves are al­so re­spon­si­ble for salaries be­ing paid,” the lo­cal foot­ball boss ex­plained.

Ed­wards al­so took a swipe at Nunes for the for­feit­ed match, say­ing, “They would have for­feit­ed their game, not shown up for the game, and by the rules, they lost the match by de­fault.”

Though Nunes is a mem­ber of the TTFA, Ed­wards as­sures that no one would be giv­en any spe­cial treat­ment, as the rules must be fol­lowed.