Pres­i­dent of the T&T Su­per League (TTSL) Lee Davis has re­signed his post, along with his first vice pres­i­dent Ed­di­son Dean and sec­ond vice pres­i­dent An­dre Bernard, in the midst of ac­cu­sa­tions by the mem­ber­ship that they were not be­ing rep­re­sent­ed.

More than 50 per­cent of the su­per league mem­bers signed a pe­ti­tion on Jan­u­ary 16 call­ing for an ur­gent Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) to chart a way for­ward in 2023, as many clubs that did not make it in­to the New Elite Foot­ball League (NE­FL) pro­posed by the FI­FA-in­stalled Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, would have been dis­en­fran­chised.

The pe­ti­tion was signed by RSSR (Dex­ter Har­ris), Pe­tit Val­ley FC (Derek Ed­wards), Matu­ra FC (Dwain Hen­ry), Cunu­pia FC (Michael De Four), Mara­bel­la Fam­i­ly Cri­sis FC (Keron Cox), Erin FC (Ja­son Gor­don), Phoenix FC (Ter­ry Williams), Guaya Unit­ed FC (Randy Ha­gley), Harlem FC (Gre­go­ry Mc Sween), Youth Stars (Anselm Rob­ley) and Ed­ing­burgh 500 (Mark Si­mon).

In the three-page doc­u­ment (pe­ti­tion), the mem­ber­ship sought to en­forced Ar­ti­cle 32.2 of the TTSL By-Laws, for the Board of Di­rec­tors to con­vene an EGM to con­sid­er their con­cerns, which com­prised; (a) No prop­er pro­ce­dures have been put in place to pro­vide the TTSL with an ac­tive gen­er­al sec­re­tary as re­quired by Ar­ti­cles 13.4 and 15(g) of the By-Laws; (b) No prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­quired gen­er­al meet­ing have been had for de­ci­sion-mak­ing; (c) Main­tain­ing the mem­ber­ship in­ter­ests (through the pur­suit of mem­ber­ship in a League that would ef­fec­tive­ly dis­en­fran­chise more than 50% of the mem­bers of the TTSL with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion with the mem­bers of the TTSL; (d) Not rep­re­sent­ing the views of the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers of the TTSL.

Guaya Unit­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jame­son Rigues said yes­ter­day and all mem­bers of the TTSL were shocked by the res­ig­na­tion, as it on­ly sought to forge a way for­ward for the league, which had been caught be­tween play­ing in the New Elite Foot­ball League or hold­ing its own com­pe­ti­tion this year.

Davis said he too was shocked and dis­ap­point­ed, as he thought they had al­ready dealt with some of the con­cerns raised in the let­ter. Con­tents of a TTSL chat showed both Dean and Davis say­ing they will re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly as the pe­ti­tion was sent out, how­ev­er, on­ly Dean has sent of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence of his res­ig­na­tion.

Davis told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day that while he is be­ing called on to re­con­sid­er his po­si­tion, it is al­most un­like­ly that he will change his mind about re­sign­ing.

David ex­plained: "When you look at the pe­ti­tion, all the is­sues that they brought up as is­sues they were all friv­o­lous in my view. The meet­ings that they men­tioned, we had al­ready dis­cussed all that, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary at the time did not come to a few meet­ings be­cause he ex­pressed some chal­lenges and we had some house­keep­ing to do. We had a meet­ing in De­cem­ber - a gen­er­al meet­ing, to talk about the Elite League and all that. He did not show up and I ad­vised the meet­ing to give me some time to see what was up with him, so we will try and straight­en up what the is­sue was, so we can have du­ly con­sti­tut­ed meet­ings with the gen­er­al sec­re­tary on board- that was Mr Lawrence Seep­er­sad."

He con­tin­ued: "We had a board meet­ing and Mr Seep­er­sad came on board and ex­pressed his will­ing­ness to go for­ward with every­thing, so to say that the busi­ness of the League was be­ing stymied or wasn't be­ing at­tend­ed too, was not a fair state­ment. A lot of the clubs gave the im­pres­sion that things were mov­ing along smooth­ly, they sent in their ap­pli­ca­tion to play in the su­per league, we did a lot of ne­go­ti­a­tions and dis­cus­sions to get the su­per league clubs to play in the sec­ond tier of the NE­FL, and to be fair, the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was very ac­com­mo­dat­ing."

With the en­tire board re­sign­ing, a search of the con­sti­tu­tion is tak­ing place to find a way to treat with the mat­ter, Rigues, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the TTSL said. "The mem­bers could maybe set a date for a meet­ing and in­stall an in­ter­im board in place. The con­sti­tu­tion does not speak to the en­tire board demit­ting of­fice at the same time."

Davis, a Pris­ons of­fi­cer with a Mas­ters' De­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance, got the nod ahead of Ke­iron Ed­wards, the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) pres­i­dent and De­fence Force's Ryan Ot­t­ley in a vir­tu­al elec­tion in 2021 for the post of pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He was al­so a mem­ber of the Board, along with Dean, Bernard and or­di­nary mem­bers George Joseph, Nicholas Gopaul and Huey Cadette.