An­tho­ny Har­ford has stepped down as pres­i­dent of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA).

How­ev­er, he re­mains a mem­ber of the Unit­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) which will to­day know its fate from the T&T High Court in Port-of-Spain, if the de­ci­sion by foot­ball’s supreme body FI­FA to re­place them with a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee was le­git­i­mate.

Yes­ter­day Har­ford, who has been ail­ing for a while, sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s sec­re­tary Rashawn Mars, which said he will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion for the NFA’s top job.

Har­ford said: “Af­ter much in­tro­spec­tion and dis­cus­sion with my fam­i­ly, I have made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to not seek re-elec­tion for the of­fice at the up­com­ing NFA elec­tions. I firm­ly be­lieve that sport lead­er­ship is a no­ble ex­er­cise, but over the past sev­er­al months I have seen foot­ball de­scend in­to up­heaval, dis­rup­tion and on the brink of de­struc­tion, which have dealt me with sav­age blows. I have reached the point of be­ing un­able to deal with this van­dal­ism.

“I wish to thank the ex­ec­u­tive for a ster­ling job in bet­ter­ing young lives through sport, it has been a plea­sure. I al­so thank the clubs for their sup­port.”

Un­der Har­ford’s lead­er­ship two teams, an Un­der-16 and an U-17 em­barked on tours in Cana­da and Tam­pa last year, which was in ad­di­tion to a smooth­ly-run tour­na­ment. Har­ford was al­so in­stru­men­tal in clin­ics be­ing host­ed at eight of the NFA’s cen­tres.

Har­ford, one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Unit­ed TTFA, promised he main­tains pro­to­col and host this year’s AGM where he will hand over to his suc­ces­sor and dis­cuss the funds that are owed to clubs which were not paid, due to the can­cel­la­tion of three fund-rais­ing ven­ture be­cause of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

This year’s AGM was ini­tial­ly card­ed for Sep­tem­ber but the pan­dem­ic forced its post­pone­ment. It is un­cer­tain, how­ev­er, when the AGM will be held since calls to Mars’ phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day and no club was able to give a def­i­nite word.

Guardian Me­dia Sports con­tact­ed of­fi­cials of RSSR Unit­ed, to be told that a meet­ing was held on Wednes­day night and an­oth­er is sched­uled for Sun­day, but it is un­cer­tain whether it will be the as­so­ci­a­tion’s AGM.

In the mean­time, Har­ford al­so promised to dis­cuss all out­stand­ing mat­ters, say­ing: “I will dis­cuss any mat­ters out­stand­ing and look for­ward to a smooth tran­si­tion. These mat­ters were not dis­cussed ear­li­er be­cause the ar­chi­tect of the change tak­ing place in the NFA, did not show up for planned meet­ings with the ex­ec­u­tive.”