Fed-up of be­ing de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play foot­ball, a group of play­ers, coach­es and oth­er foot­ball of­fi­cials will take to the streets of Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing at the of­fice of Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe on Thurs­day morn­ing, to air their con­cerns on why foot­ball is not be­ing played.

The group is be­ing led by Jef­fer­son George, pres­i­dent of the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T and Michael De Four, coach of Cunu­pia FC and oth­ers, call­ing them­selves con­cerned cit­i­zens of foot­ball.

Know­ing about the lim­i­ta­tions to protest or march, the group has print­ed jer­seys they be­lieve will help con­vey their mes­sage. The group will as­sem­ble at a meet­ing point in the cap­i­tal city on Thurs­day morn­ing and will pa­rade through­out the streets, focu­ing on sev­er­al Min­istries, De Four said yes­ter­day.

Their con­cerns stem from a writ­ten re­quest made by the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment of T&T to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, ask­ing for per­mis­sion to host its foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

The re­quest was sup­port­ed by a list of some 30 COVID-19 guide­lines to be fol­lowed by all, to en­sure the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of all in­volved, ei­ther tak­ing part in the games, of­fi­ci­at­ing, or sup­port­ing.

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh in a writ­ten re­sponse a few days lat­er blanked the tour­na­ment, based on the cur­rent delta vari­ant which has been sweep­ing through com­mu­ni­ties in T&T.

Fol­low­ing an an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ‘vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate’ a few months ago, it was fur­ther an­nounced that restau­rants, bars and casi­nos were al­so opened with­in the lim­i­ta­tions of safe zones.

De Four in­sist­ed that his mem­bers are not in­to the busi­ness of break­ing the laws, hence why they’re not play­ing foot­ball al­though the sport is al­leged­ly go­ing on at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions across the coun­try.

He said: “We’re in a state of dis­ar­ray when the gov­ern­ment could an­nounce that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and you can drink al­co­hol in safe zones, and the same thing ap­plies to go in the casi­nos, and we are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, ref­er­ees and every­body but you’re say­ing no.

"You said, 'vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate', that was a gov­ern­ment slo­gan, but here it is an en­ti­ty, is say­ing hey, every­body has been vac­ci­nat­ed and we’re ready to go, and you’re telling them no. So, we have a lit­tle is­sue with that, be­cause the less we play foot­ball, the more the in­dus­try crum­bles and crum­bles, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to re­cov­er from where we were, or at­tain­ing the goals we would like to at­tain.”

Not much will be said dur­ing the walk, with the hope that as peo­ple (play­ers/coach­es etc) fol­low­ing the call to be vac­ci­nat­ed to op­er­ate, that the mes­sage will be sent loud and clear to the pow­ers that be.

“We will be march­ing through Port-of-Spain, we’re go­ing to touch one or two min­istries. Of course, the Min­istry of Sports must get in touch, but we will pass around it and then come back down the road dur­ing a peace­ful walk.

"I think it will be a com­bi­na­tion of the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Sports. I will not be able to call out all the min­istries, al­though I would like the min­is­ters and the sports min­is­ter to show some com­pas­sion to­wards the sports fra­ter­ni­ty and work with us as sports en­thu­si­asts, at least to over­come this hur­dle," De Four said.