WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is once again mired in con­tro­ver­sy and fac­ing po­ten­tial le­gal ac­tion fol­low­ing its re­cent de­ci­sion to award Harlem Strik­ers the sixth and fi­nal spot to con­test the quar­ter­fi­nals of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), Tier 2’s “Big 6” com­pe­ti­tion that is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to­day.

Fol­low­ing writ­ten protest from the Strik­ers sur­round­ing the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of Der­ron John to rep­re­sent Guaya Unit­ed in an ear­li­er match against Bethel, the TTFA has ad­mit­ted that him play­ing was an er­ror and pe­nalised Guaya, a move that now al­lows the Strik­ers to ad­vance and will now see them square off against Po­lice FC at a time and lo­ca­tion yet to be de­cid­ed.

The de­ci­sion to grant Harlem Strik­ers the sixth po­si­tion in the League comes on the heels of last week’s let­ter of protest which ap­pealed a 4-2 Guaya win over Bethel, with John be­ing flagged as an in­el­i­gi­ble play­er. In their protest, the Strik­ers stat­ed that he should not have been al­lowed to play in that game as his move from San Juan Jabloteh to Guaya was not le­gal, as it was done out­side the trans­fer win­dow of Ju­ly 17-27.

But the TTFA de­ci­sion is not go­ing down well or be­ing ac­cept­ed by Guaya Unit­ed own­er and man­ag­er, Randy Ha­gley, who yes­ter­day stat­ed he was pre­pared to take le­gal ac­tion against the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion if Harlem is al­lowed to play in the “Big 6” ahead of his team.

The out­spo­ken Ha­gley said Guaya is stand­ing firm that they have done noth­ing wrong and fol­lowed the TTFA reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the move­ment of play­ers and that the trans­fer was le­git­i­mate and ac­cept­ed by the TTFA.

He fur­ther charged that the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion was yet to give a re­sponse di­rect­ly to his club stat­ing ex­act­ly what they did wrong, based on the rules and sys­tem they were made to fol­low.

Ac­cord­ing to Ha­gley, the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion it­self would pre­vent Harlem Strik­ers from be­ing the club which could protest his club’s use of John.

He said, “Not on­ly was Bethel the on­ly club to protest their use of John at the time, but the protest was al­so done out­side of the win­dow. A win­dow of 48 hours or two days is giv­en for clubs to protest, but Harlem’s protest came more than three days af­ter the match.”

Both teams had fin­ished the round-robin in­sep­a­ra­ble with iden­ti­cal points and goal dif­fer­ence, but Guaya’s coach, Travis Mul­raine, asked the TTFA to en­force the FI­FA rule of us­ing re­sults of any head-to-head match-up as the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor when this oc­curs. This means the 4-2 score­line which went in their favour, see­ing his team ad­vanc­ing to take the fi­nal spot.

But the le­gal ac­tion can be avoid­ed as Ha­gley of­fered an olive branch to the TTFA and sug­gest­ed an­oth­er path to re­solv­ing the im­passe, by join­ing Derek Ed­wards, the Pe­tit Val­ley Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed man­ag­er, in propos­ing that the TTFA can arrange a one-off match be­tween Guaya and Harlem Strik­ers to de­cide which team gets the fi­nal play­off spot.

Ed­wards, in lob­by­ing for the one-off game, drew an anal­o­gy say­ing, “If you are the gate­keep­er for an or­gan­i­sa­tion and you al­low some­one who should not be in to come in, then you can­not blame any­one if some­thing goes wrong. It is the TTFA that is keep­ing back the process be­cause they refuse to ac­cept the blame of let­ting John play as he did in this case.

“It is iron­ic that the TTFA re­fused to ac­cept RSSR in­to the League at the be­gin­ning for not hav­ing a doc­u­ment from the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, some­thing that was to­tal­ly out of their hands. Yet, the TTFA de­nied them. The irony is that the same TTFA wants clubs to ac­cept their er­ror and move on when they didn’t do so for RSSR.”

The lat­est sug­ges­tions and threats of le­gal ac­tion may be some­what of a shock to the TTFA who may have con­sid­ered the mat­ter closed since last week when Amiel Mo­hammed, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the em­bat­tled body, sent out a let­ter which clear­ly stat­ed: “The TTFA and T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) con­firm that Guaya Unit­ed’s cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed 17 Sep­tem­ber 2023 and sub­se­quent email notes have been re­ceived re­gard­ing the mat­ter of the sta­tus of play­er Der­ron John.

“Pur­suant to our cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed 20 Sep­tem­ber 2023, the TTFA Spe­cial Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee (SDC) has is­sued a de­ci­sion on the mat­ter and it is now con­sid­ered closed in ac­cor­dance with the Reg­u­la­tions and Par­tic­i­pa­tion Agree­ment of the TTPFL, the FI­FA Dis­ci­pli­nary Code, oth­er rel­e­vant FI­FA, TTFA, and TTPFL guide­lines or doc­u­men­ta­tion and the pro­vi­sions for ap­peal as pre­scribed in the reg­u­la­tions and rel­e­vant doc­u­ments. We al­so ac­knowl­edge your com­mu­ni­ca­tion with re­spect to the oth­er mat­ters raised which are in­ter­nal to the TTFA.”

All eyes will now be on the TTFA and the clubs in­volved in the Big 6 to see what hap­pens next.