Jef­fer­son George, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T (UFCTT) has again called for Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man, Robert Hadad to ap­point the nec­es­sary stand­ing com­mit­tees of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

The TTFA con­sti­tu­tion com­pris­es no few­er than 16 such stand­ing com­mit­tees as fol­lows: Emer­gency Com­mit­tee: Fi­nance Com­mit­tee: Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee: Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee for TTFA Com­pe­ti­tions: Tech­ni­cal and De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee: Le­gal Com­mit­tee: Com­mit­tee for Women’s Foot­ball: Youth Foot­ball and De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee: Sports Med­i­cine Com­mit­tee: Play­ers’ Sta­tus Com­mit­tee: Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee: Club Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee: Elec­toral Com­mit­tee: Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee: Ethics Com­mit­tee: Ap­peal Com­mit­tee:

How­ev­er, since the ap­point­ment of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee on March 17, 2020, those com­mit­tees have been in­ac­tive and calls have been made by var­i­ous stake­hold­ers of the sport to have them im­ple­ment­ed and func­tion­ing.

Re­cent­ly, calls were again made by UFCTT Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary and for­mer na­tion­al youth goal­keep­er Rayshawn Mars for the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to make the much-need­ed ap­point­ments to the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee as it is the body that is re­spon­si­ble for the se­lec­tion of na­tion­al coach­es as well as the Fi­nance Stand­ing Com­mit­tee.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day about the per­ma­nent ap­point­ment of Eve to the per­ma­nent post of na­tion­al men’s team foot­ball coach, George, a for­mer na­tion­al youth goal­keep­er said he be­lieves the right choice was made.

George added, “We will def­i­nite­ly like to con­grat­u­late An­gus (Eve) be­cause we be­lieve that he is a good choice for the job. We wish An­gus and his team all the best and not just An­gus, but all the oth­er teams that are in train­ing, the women’s team in par­tic­u­lar.”

Re­flect­ing on Eve’s tenure as in­ter­im boss at the Gold Cup, George added, “We think that he (Eve) did enough in his ca­pac­i­ty as the in­ter­im coach tak­ing us through the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and rep­re­sent­ing well in the group stages.”

How­ev­er, while the nam­ing of Eve has the full back­ing of George, he said he was still not pleased with the process be­ing used by Hadad.

George said, “We still find is­sues with the lack of process as that is some­thing that we have al­ways sort of ob­ject­ed to.

“We have rec­og­nized in the state­ment made by the TTFA it quot­ed Mr Hadad stat­ing that Eve would have done well in his tenure as in­ter­im coach and he al­so ex­pects him to work well with the youths and so on, which is a state­ment of fact.”

How­ev­er, George said: “But, that is not the role or re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the NC chair­man, that is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee. So it’s a lit­tle bit iron­ic that while Mr Hadad is mak­ing a state­ment or per­form­ing the func­tion of the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee he has not ap­point­ed one, which is his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­in his re­mits. So, we con­tin­ue to call on the NC to ap­point all the stand­ing com­mit­tees so that they can fo­cus on what they need to do and the com­mit­tees can go about and do their func­tion. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the NC would still have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of over­sight but at this point, the way how things are be­ing done is not how it is meant to be car­ried. I don’t think we are ask­ing for too much to have things done in a way that it should be,” George end­ed.

This was done af­ter Welsh­man James Thomas was named as the T&T se­nior women’s team head coach, with the rest of his tech­ni­cal staff be­ing se­lect­ed in Char­lie Mitchell (as­sis­tant coach and per­for­mance an­a­lyst), James Baird (goal­keep­er coach), Joanne Daniel (team man­ag­er), Ter­ry John­son-Je­re­mi­ah (equip­ment man­ag­er), At­i­ba Downes (strength and con­di­tion­ing coach) and Aqilya Gomez (re­hab spe­cial­ist) all with­out hav­ing had any pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing in those po­si­tions and all, non-na­tion­als as well.

In­clud­ed in de­cid­ing on the na­tion­al women’s team staff were T&TFA Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Dion La Fou­cade, for­mer T&T play­er Richard Chi­napoo, Women’s Di­rec­tor of Foot­ball Jinelle James and Thomas.

On Thurs­day, for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain and record ap­pear­ances (118 caps) hold­er An­gus Eve was ap­point­ed per­ma­nent­ly to fill the po­si­tion of se­nior na­tion­al men’s coach as well as the Un­der-20 men’s team un­til March 31, 2023.

This af­ter the 49-year-old Eve served as in­ter­im coach fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment in June, for the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Con­ca­caf Gold Cup qual­i­fiers and Group Stage match­es in the USA un­til Au­gust 31 fol­low­ing an un­suc­cess­ful qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign to the 2022 FI­FA World Cup un­der then-head coach Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick, who was ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber 2019.

The an­nounce­ment on Eve’s ap­point­ment which came via a news re­lease from the FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).