Prison of­fi­cer Lee Davis is the new pres­i­dent of the T&T Su­per League (TTSL).

He got the nod ahead of Ke­iron Ed­wards, the for­mer East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) pres­i­dent and De­fence Force's Ryan Ot­t­ley in a hot­ly con­test­ed vir­tu­al elec­tion on Sun­day.

Ot­t­ley, once favoured for the lead po­si­tion in the ini­tial stages, was dropped af­ter the first round of vot­ing which Davis won 8-4-2. In the sec­ond round, the 14 clubs that went equipped with vot­ing rights, again gave the prison of­fi­cer the nod eight votes to two over Ed­wards.

But as the cel­e­bra­tions were re­duced to the con­fines of his home, Davis sur­pris­ing said it was not what he ex­pect­ed.

"I didn't look at the whole land­scape, it was like a three-week de­ci­sion for me more or less and I was asked to throw my hat in­to the ring, but I re­al­ly wasn't ex­pect­ing it," Davis said.

Mean­while, sev­en clubs sus­pend­ed by the Su­per League in 2019 were re­in­stat­ed. De­fence Force, Cen­tral 500 FC, Harlem Strik­ers FC, Mara­bel­la FCC, 1976 Phoenix, WASA FC and the Youth Stars have now been giv­en their rights to vote at meet­ings among oth­er priv­i­leges but this de­ci­sion came fol­low­ing Sun­day's elec­tions.

On Fri­day, four of the 11 clubs - 1976 Phoenix, Harlem FC, Youth Stars and Cen­tral 500 - is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to TTSL sec­re­tary Pe­ter Thomas through their At­tor­ney Pe­ter Tay­lor, threat­en­ing to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion if they were not al­lowed to vote on Sun­day.

Davis said that is­sue was not on­ly new to him, but it did not come up for de­bate at the meet­ing. How­ev­er, he urged clubs to do the right thing, say­ing, they do not on­ly rep­re­sent their own in­ter­est, but the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ties they come from.

Davis will now at­tempt to reach clubs in­di­vid­u­al­ly as his first or­der of busi­ness is to mend bridges, say­ing: "The clubs got re­in­stat­ed so it's now to bridge the di­vide or the sit­u­a­tion that caused the prob­lem. We must see what the is­sues are and then try to mend the gaps among the clubs in the Su­per League. I want to go with the clubs to their dif­fer­ent ar­eas and re­al­ly have a meet­ing with­in the com­mu­ni­ties so that the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties would know that the clubs are theirs, not the ex­ec­u­tive of the clubs."

With a Mas­ters De­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance, Davis is now set to pro­vide much-need­ed as­sis­tance to clubs dis­en­fran­chised by be­ing non-com­pli­ant, as well as those in need of gen­er­al man­age­ment help.

A vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion and chair­man of the East Zone, Davis said an­oth­er main chal­lenge for him will be to at­tract spon­sors.

"Spon­sor­ship, es­pe­cial­ly in T&T foot­ball, has al­ways been a sore point. We don't get the lev­el of spon­sor­ship we need, we don't get the spon­sors to stay, and one of the things that might be the rea­son for that is the at­trac­tive­ness of the prod­uct, and dif­fer­ent things go in­to that, so we have to work that out.

"Af­ter that is to get the best play­ers to play up to the top lev­el, and of course, mon­ey is an­oth­er prob­lem, so it's the chick­en and egg syn­drome.

"But I think once we get the clubs and the League to show that all our ac­tions are above board, with re­spect to au­dit and fi­nanc­ing, you'll find that spon­sors might be very will­ing to get in­volved."

Davis' slate will in­clude first vice-pres­i­dent Ed­di­son Dean, sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent An­dre Bernard and Board mem­bers George Joseph, Nicholas Gopaul and Huey Cadette.

Davis re­places Clay­ton Mor­ris, who was vot­ed in , in 2020, as the new pres­i­dent in place of Jame­son Rigues, the then TTSL's first vice-pres­i­dent who took over the lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Kei­th Look Loy in Oc­to­ber 2020.