Kieron Ed­wards has been giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty along with his very ex­pe­ri­enced Team Progress slate to take T&T foot­ball in­to a new era.

This as Ed­wards, the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) pres­i­dent, was elect­ed as the new pres­i­dent of the TTFA by a vote count of 38-19 over Col­in Wharfe and Team Trans­for­ma­tion at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Sat­ur­day (April 13).

The vot­ing del­e­gates were re­quired to reg­is­ter their vote, via se­cret bal­lot, at the Elec­tive Con­gress for ei­ther one of the two slates – “Slate Ed­wards” or “Slate Wharfe”.

The ap­point­ment of Ed­wards who will serve as the head of lo­cal foot­ball for the next four years al­so brings to an end the tenure of the Robert Hadad-led FI­FA-ap­point­ed nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee af­ter four years in charge of T&T foot­ball af­ter the reign of then-new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent William Wal­lace was swift­ly brought to a calami­tous end sev­er­al months in­to his tenure.

The oth­er mem­bers of the new TTFA ex­ec­u­tive in­clude sports com­men­ta­tor Col­in Mur­ray (first vice-pres­i­dent), for­mer FI­FA ref­er­ee Os­mond Down­er (sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent), Jame­son Rigues (third vice pres­i­dent) and or­di­nary mem­bers, Ryan Nunes, An­drew Bood­hoo, Al­lan Lo­gan, Ali­cia Austin, and Shel­ton Williams.

The oth­er mem­bers of Wharfe's slate were Colonel Ke­ston Charles (first vice-pres­i­dent), Re­nee John-Williams (sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent), Huey Cadette (third vice-pres­i­dent), and or­di­nary mem­bers Colm De Fre­itas, Ri­az Ali, Lee Davis, Makan His­lop and Richard Ma­son.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing his Team Progress tri­umph in the elec­tion a beam­ing Ed­wards said he was hap­py, hum­bled and ho­n­oured to be the new pres­i­dent of the TTFA.

"Af­ter four years of nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, I think the mem­bers would have giv­en me a bit of con­fi­dence with the vote and I am ready to work."

Com­ment­ing on the work done by his team in the build-up to the elec­tion, Ed­wards said, "Our slate would have done the work and left it in the hands of the mem­ber­ship and they made their de­ci­sion. So, it was up to the mem­bers and they de­cid­ed to give us the con­fi­dence and we are re­al­ly hum­bled and ho­n­oured by it.

Look­ing ahead, Ed­wards said he will be hav­ing a re­lax­ing "Sun­day" (to­day) be­fore he gets to work to­mor­row (Mon­day).

He said, "The cam­paign has been hec­tic and I in­tend to hit the ground run­ning on Mon­day, meet with the NC chair­man, work on the hand­ing over and meet with the mem­bers of staff to en­gage with the team."

Ed­wards said he in­tends to en­gage cor­po­rate T&T, and the Gov­ern­ment in terms of their as­sis­tance to foot­ball and the as­sets that be­long to the TTFA.

"So, it's go­ing to be a col­lec­tive ap­proach we in­tend to deal with and it's one that we have been say­ing dur­ing our cam­paign as well.

"It's a mem­bers-first ap­proach, one of in­clu­sion and part­ner­ships and it will con­tin­ue dur­ing our tenure.

Asked to com­ment on se­nior men's coach An­gus Eve's squad, Ed­wards said, "My vi­sion is sim­i­lar to that of T&T na­tion­als in terms of en­sur­ing that they qual­i­fy for the next World Cup not just for foot­ball but for T&T be­cause it's a uni­fy­ing and heal­ing thing.

"We know the pow­er of foot­ball through­out the world and we in­tend to utilise foot­ball to leave a pos­i­tive mark on T&T.

Con­cern­ing Eve's po­si­tion as coach, as well as gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA, Ed­wards made it clear that he in­tends to ho­n­our all con­tracts of those em­ployed cur­rent­ly and as­sured that coach Eve will be giv­en all the sup­port to qual­i­fy the team for the next World Cup.

He added, "It's not a sit­u­a­tion of mov­ing peo­ple, it's about giv­ing the sup­port for T&T and en­hanc­ing what we do and en­sur­ing that we have the cor­rect de­vel­op­ment and en­sur­ing that we do qual­i­fy for tour­na­ments and al­so that we do well in these tour­na­ments.

Ed­wards was al­so full of praise for the Robert Hadad-led nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, say­ing, "The NC played a cru­cial role in T&T and we need to un­der­stand that and we need to ac­knowl­edge the ser­vice that they would have giv­en to T&T foot­ball.

"It's not easy to give four years of your time to an or­gan­i­sa­tion that you may not have want­ed to in the ini­tial stage, mean­ing that you didn't put your­self for­ward for the mem­ber to elect you.

"So, you first have to tip your hat to the NC and the chair­man for the work that they would have done.

"We all have dif­fer­ent views in terms of how we op­er­ate but in terms of the ser­vice giv­en, you have to give cred­it to them for that.

"They would have done a tremen­dous job on con­sol­i­dat­ing our debt and hav­ing it there in one place now through FI­FA and we have to give re­spect to that and you have to give to the NC as well and the team that would have worked on that and we now have the abil­i­ty to lay a new foun­da­tion for foot­ball."

Beat­en can­di­date and Team Trans­for­ma­tion head, Col­in Wharfe praised the vot­ing process say­ing it was ex­cel­lent.

How­ev­er, said he was ex­pect­ing some­what of a dif­fer­ent out­come.

He ex­plained," You get com­mit­ment and un­der­stand­ing from in­di­vid­u­als and it didn't pan out that way. So they may have changed their minds, I have no idea, but it is their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to do as they wish."

"In the fi­nal analy­sis, they made a se­lec­tion and we got to ho­n­our that so­lu­tion," end­ed Wharfe.

De­spite his loss, Wharfe the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League said he will con­tin­ue to do his job while await­ing the new­ly ap­point­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive to make their de­ter­mi­na­tions.

Hadad al­so praised the elec­tion process say­ing that it was very pro­fes­sion­al and he was al­so de­light­ed with the full turnout of the TTFA mem­ber­ship.

"It demon­strat­ed the type of sup­port T&T foot­ball has from with­in and the fu­ture is bright."

Hadad al­so thanked FI­FA and Con­ca­caf for their sup­port and ad­vice in get­ting lo­cal foot­ball to this point.

He added, "The NC process is com­plet­ed but one out­stand­ing mat­ter is the BIA process which is still pend­ing, as well as the two mat­ters be­fore the court, which will con­tin­ue to be looked af­ter the Trustee Maria Daniel, but oth­er than that the TTFA is debt free apart from the FI­FA loan which will be re­paid in ten years."

New TTFA ex­ec­u­tive

Pres­i­dent: Kieron Ed­wards

First vice-pres­i­dent: Col­in Mur­ray

Sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent: Os­mond Down­er

Third vice pres­i­dent: Jame­son Rigues

Or­di­nary mem­ber: Ryan Nunes

Or­di­nary mem­ber: An­drew Bood­hoo

Or­di­nary mem­ber: Al­lan Lo­gan

Or­di­nary mem­ber: Ali­cia Austin

Or­di­nary mem­ber: Shel­ton Williams