A Sep­tem­ber 9 dead­line has been giv­en to the Robert Hadad-led FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which was ap­point­ed to run the af­fairs of foot­ball in T&T af­ter the re­moval of elect­ed William Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive ear­li­er this for salaries owed to ap­point­ed na­tion­al coach­es to be paid.

This was stat­ed by a quar­tet of coach­es in­clu­sive of for­mer na­tion­al cap­tains, Clay­ton Mor­ris and An­gus Eve as well as Wayne "Bar­ney" Shep­phard, and Richard Hood at a me­dia con­fer­ence held at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege Ground, Mu­cu­rapo Road, yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing as mem­bers of what he de­scribed as the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee rep­re­sent­ing the na­tion­al coach­es in their mat­ter with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion/Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Eve, the most capped play­er in T&T foot­ball his­to­ry with 118 ap­pear­ances said the want­ed to pro­vide an up­date on their strug­gles to be com­pen­sat­ed or pro­vid­ed with their agreed salaries as na­tion­al coach­es of the var­i­ous na­tion­al teams for the pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary up to the present.

Eve said, "Af­ter drop­ping off our con­tracts at the T&TFA head of­fice last week Tues­day to ad­vance the process, we then had a phone call from the NC say­ing that they would like to meet with us on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis, which they had promised to do about five months ago, so we were hap­py for that."

"We did meet with them on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis, each one of the head coach­es was able to meet with them and ar­tic­u­late our po­si­tions and the meet­ings were cor­dial, and very in­ter­est­ing be­cause for them, they are now com­ing in, and not try­ing to make any ex­cus­es for them, but we did seek to give them a lit­tle bit of lat­i­tude sim­ply be­cause they didn't know what they were get­ting in­to. It still doesn't give them any rea­son for the lengthy de­lay in not com­mu­ni­cat­ing with us, so putting that out of the way, there is some­thing on the ta­ble and they now have to go back and talk to the nec­es­sary peo­ple who are giv­ing the mon­ey to them. We have sent in all of our bank ac­counts in­for­ma­tion so that we can be paid di­rect­ly, we have sug­gest­ed that, and they now have un­til the 9th of Sep­tem­ber to get back to us with the in­for­ma­tion on what is the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age that all of are go­ing to get."

Eve, the coach of T&T Pro League's Club San­do FC as well as Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) team Na­pari­ma Col­lege said, "The re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages were not fi­nalised based on the fact that they had to go back to FI­FA to get the monies to be re­leased."

An op­ti­mistic Eve said, "We are con­vinced that we will get some­thing. As I said be­fore, we worked and we have not bur­dened the gov­ern­ment. We could have gone to the gov­ern­ment be­cause we haven't been work­ing since Jan­u­ary and we could have bur­dened the gov­ern­ment fur­ther, and we thought that it's bet­ter than oth­er per­sons in the pub­lic get those grants, and all we are ask­ing for is the mon­ey is too be paid. If we look past the nor­mal FI­FA mon­ey that is sup­posed to come in and we just look at the US$500,000 grant that FI­FA give for Covid-19 re­lief it com­fort­ably can pay all of the staff, all of their salaries."

Pressed to give a fig­ure, Eve said that the to­tal com­bined salaries owed to the coach­es out­side of the se­nior tech­ni­cal team is in the re­gion of $450,000 or a lit­tle over that fig­ure.

Eve not­ed that to help speed up the process of the NC meet­ing with the ap­point­ed coach­es, it was de­cid­ed that in­stead of hav­ing in­di­vid­ual meet­ings with the 47 per­sons, each head coach of each tech­ni­cal team was ap­point­ed to meet with the NC and then re­lay the in­for­ma­tion to their tech­ni­cal team.

Asked how he felt about the sta­tus of their fight for de­served salaries, Eve said, "It's de­mo­ti­vat­ing be­cause we do it for the pas­sion, but for some of us this is the way we take care of our fam­i­lies, and when you don't get pay for work be­ing done it bor­ders on a lev­el of dis­re­spect as we said be­fore."

With foot­ball grind to a halt lo­cal­ly, Eve stressed, "There is no form of work for any of us as we don't have any oth­er jobs that can sup­ple­ment an in­come and for a lot of us this is what we do full-time.

"For in­stance, Eng­land-based for­mer goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack left the po­si­tion that he had out there and want­ed to come home and take up the po­si­tion that he got, but be­cause of the covid19 he couldn't fly home, so he is out there and he has been hav­ing to live off his sav­ings, and there are a lot more sto­ries very sim­i­lar to that," stat­ed Eve.

"Based on the fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion that we have and we know that FI­FA grants don't go to­wards debt re­duc­tion, and we un­der­stand the T&TFA has a mag­nan­i­mous debt, but none of it oc­curred be­cause of our ac­tions, and FI­FA mon­ey is not to go to debt res­o­lu­tion, so we are very con­fi­dent that we will be get­ting all our monies."

Should no agree­ment be reached by the dead­line set out Eve said it will be due to no fault of theirs.

"The in­for­ma­tion is sup­posed to come back to us by Sep­tem­ber 9, in terms of how are we go­ing to be paid and we don't fore­see any de­lays be­cause we al­ready ad­vanced the process by giv­ing them all our bank­ing in­for­ma­tion, and we went to them with all our arrange­ments. We do have com­rades, guys who were un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly fired from the job in the past, who are be­ing owed, and again we will like them to get paid al­so."

Look­ing past the dead­line, Eve said the coach­es have not giv­en any in­di­ca­tion of with­hold­ing their ser­vices as the na­tion­al se­nior team is sched­uled to be­gin a World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, pro­vid­ing no sanc­tions are hand­ed down by FI­FA to the lo­cal body based on com­mu­ni­ca­tion from FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura on Au­gust 26 and ad­dressed to Hadad of the NC, warn­ing that the TTFA face sanc­tions if it did not with­draw the mat­ter in the T&T High Court by Sep­tem­ber 16.

For­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents - Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip have chal­lenged FI­FA de­ci­sion to ap­point an NC in the T&T High court which is against FI­FA statutes.

Eve said, "We have World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tions in Oc­to­ber and we don't know if that might off sim­ply be­cause of how the place is still on lock­down due to the covid19 sit­u­a­tion, but any op­por­tu­ni­ty all of us have to serve our coun­try we will con­tin­ue to be com­mit­ted to do­ing so and we will con­tin­ue to help the de­vel­op­ment of the young peo­ple of the coun­try."

Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er not­ed that a pos­i­tive side to this bat­tle has been a de­sire by all coach­es, not just on a na­tion­al coach­ing lev­el to form a Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion with the reg­is­tra­tion al­ready in process.