Since my name has gone up to be on a slate for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) elec­tions, some have com­ment­ed to me: “I see you throw your hat in the ring,” and, “Man, I am shocked you are go­ing up for TTFA elec­tions!”

I want to make a con­tri­bu­tion to foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is easy to sit on the out­side, crit­i­cise and speak or write about the ills plagu­ing foot­ball in the coun­try with­out at least mak­ing an ef­fort to fix them. I re­peat­ed­ly asked my­self if I thought long and hard about the road ahead. Who com­prised the slate? Are they go­ing to have the best in­ter­est of foot­ball as their pri­or­i­ty, and what will this group’s phi­los­o­phy be?

When it comes to ‘Tri­ni to the bone,’ I fall in­to that cat­e­go­ry, and rep­re­sent­ing my coun­try at crick­et, and the re­gion at the Un­der-19 lev­el gave me great pride and joy. But, go­ing to Ger­many to com­men­tate on the games played by the So­ca War­riors, as well as trav­el­ling to the games and see­ing sev­er­al fel­low Tri­nis dressed in their na­tion­al colours to sup­port, gives me goose­bumps up to to­day, es­pe­cial­ly when the na­tion­al an­them was be­ing played in that mem­o­rable game against Swe­den.

Every­one must have a voice when it comes to Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball, and I have al­ready been in dis­cus­sions with the slate to en­sure it will be an all-in­clu­sive ap­proach as it must be “we,” not “I” or “us” that has to change the face of foot­ball. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some dirty pol­i­tics have al­ready crept in, try­ing to tar­nish peo­ple’s names, which is not how Team Pro­gres­sive (as we call our­selves) will con­duct the cam­paign. The team will fo­cus on what we can bring to the ta­ble rather than wast­ing time try­ing to sul­ly the op­po­si­tion. For years, ex­pe­ri­ence and good gov­er­nance have been what foot­ball has been cry­ing out for, and I be­lieve the slate can pro­vide just that. As we get clos­er to TTFA’s Elec­tion Day on April 13, more and more in­for­ma­tion will be sup­plied by the team.

Now, my heart bleeds for a young, promis­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go U-20 and Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) foot­baller, Michael Chaves, whose leg was bro­ken by a hor­ri­ble tack­le from a Matu­ra Re­unit­ed de­fend­er on Sun­day evening in a Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League Tier II game played at the train­ing field of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. He lay on the ground in tears and in ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain as I had ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar in­jury play­ing the beau­ti­ful games years ago, so trust me, I knew just how this 18-year-old felt ly­ing on the ground think­ing, why me?

He was due to trav­el to the USA to au­di­tion for the Jef­fer­son Cup, as many coach­es would at­tend the tour­na­ment to seek out po­ten­tial play­ers and award them schol­ar­ships to col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. But he opt­ed to play for QPCC be­fore he left — I salute him for that, as he could so eas­i­ly have sat on the side­lines and de­cid­ed he was not play­ing any foot­ball un­til he went over­seas. It is so un­for­tu­nate what has hap­pened but thank­ful­ly, he has had suc­cess­ful surgery and will get an­oth­er at­tempt in the fu­ture to show­case his tal­ents and un­doubt­ed­ly will get that schol­ar­ship that he yearns for.

What tran­spired in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent with Chaves is what both­ered me. The QPCC coach was sent off for some­thing he said to the ref­er­ee while over the gri­mac­ing Chaves, and it ap­peared that words were not just spo­ken be­tween the coach and ref­er­ee Rash­by Mc Phie. Be­ing present at the time, I went across to the rest of the tech­ni­cal staff of the QPCC bench just to try and calm their emo­tions and put the in­ci­dent of what hap­pened to Chaves out of their mind and give it their all and play to win for the in­jured Mikey (as they re­fer to him) who was be­ing whisked away in a siren-blar­ing am­bu­lance.

When I reached the play­ers, they were out­raged. They said that the ref­er­ee said to them that they were “...weak and need­ed to eat more”. At that point, I was stunned. I do not know the ref­er­ee per­son­al­ly, as I try to stay away from of­fi­cials due to my com­men­tary du­ties and my af­fil­i­a­tion with a club, but I de­cid­ed to ap­proach him to ask him if that was true and to re­frain from speak­ing to the play­ers in that man­ner as it is not right and very un­be­com­ing of a ref­er­ee to tell a play­er or a team(s) that they are weak. It sounds pe­cu­liar to have to say this but ref­er­ees are there to of­fi­ci­ate foot­ball match­es, not to com­ment on play­ers and their skill lev­els dur­ing a match.

As they say, who sent me? Even though he ad­mit­ted that he did make that re­mark that the play­ers were “weak,” he claimed that it was not di­rect­ed at the team (which they all de­nied). In­stead, he sin­gled out a play­er who was on the bench to whom he had said that. How­ev­er, he was wrong and filled with an at­ti­tude stat­ing the ob­vi­ous that he was in charge rather than apol­o­gis­ing and say­ing that his emo­tions got the bet­ter of him. In­stead, I was told by a TTFA Match Of­fi­cial, “If you don’t like it, put it in the pa­pers.” Well, Mr. Mc Phie, you got your wish.

I am very aware ref­er­ees and um­pires have the most dif­fi­cult job in the world, es­pe­cial­ly with games be­ing car­ried live on tele­vi­sion and the abil­i­ty to slow the game down and show re­plays, but they al­ways say the best of­fi­cials are the ones not heard or seen and ad­mit they made a mis­take. When I was stand­ing on the side­line, I heard ref­er­ee Mc Phie say to a Matu­ra play­er: “Don’t tell me any­thing, shut your mouth!”

Again, I was stunned. Just as we ex­pect cer­tain stan­dards from our play­ers, we should ex­pect cer­tain stan­dards from our ref­er­ees, and by and large, even though club of­fi­cials may not agree with me, they have been do­ing a good job in the Tier I di­vi­sion. But sure­ly the stan­dard of ref­er­ee­ing must al­so be very good in the Tier II di­vi­sion.

There was no ref­er­ees’ as­ses­sor at the game, which was dis­re­spect­ful to the Tier II teams. My ad­vice to the man in charge of the whis­tle is to tone down your at­ti­tude, im­prove your fit­ness lev­els, and be well-re­spect­ed by the play­ers. Ref­er­ees like Crys­tal Sobers, Ce­cile Hinds, and Kwin­si Williams all have an ev­i­dent­ly good rap­port with the play­ers and are not of­ten seen, far less heard. Per­haps ref­er­ee Mc Phie needs to be made aware that re­spect is earned, not giv­en on de­mand, and by the way, the play­ers are not weak; ask Michael Chaves.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The vows ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.