Su­san Joseph-War­rick, the sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and pres­i­dent of the Women's Foot­ball League (Wolf), has an­nounced her res­ig­na­tion from all foot­ball in T&T and has be­come the first ca­su­al­ty of the le­gal bat­tle be­tween the TTFA and FI­FA on Fri­day. Joseph-War­rick's an­nounce­ment to her ex­ec­u­tive comes less than 24 hours af­ter FI­FA of­fi­cial­ly sus­pend­ed the T&TFA as a mem­ber of the world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The rul­ing means that T&T can­not par­tic­i­pate in any FI­FA tour­na­ments, events or pro­gramme any­where in the world un­til the sus­pen­sion is lift­ed.

T&T was look­ing for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing in next year's Gold Cup tour­na­ment in the Unit­ed States and the up­com­ing World Cup qual­i­fiers in March 2021.

The rul­ing fol­lows a de­ci­sion by the for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive to chal­lenge in court, FI­FA’s right to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to man­age the af­fairs of foot­ball in T&T.

Joseph-War­rick, who was elect­ed as WoLF pres­i­dent in April 2019 on a two-year term, was the lone woman on the Unit­ed TTFA slate that con­test­ed the TTFA No­vem­ber 24, 2019 elec­tions to form the ex­ec­u­tive and serve along­side for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor and Joseph Sam Phillips.

Joseph-War­rick's res­ig­na­tion let­ter reads:

Dear Gen­tle­men,

"I wish to ad­vise of my Res­ig­na­tion from The Unit­ed TTFA, Trinidad and To­ba­go Women's League Foot­ball(TT WoLF) and my Elect­ed post of 2nd Vice Pres­i­dent of the TTFA.

To­day I look back to al­most two(2) years ago, when I be­came a TTFA Board mem­ber and de­cid­ed to fight for Ac­count­abil­i­ty, Hon­esty and Good Gov­er­nance, to fight for our young women who were al­ways a foot­note, to fight for the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball.

That was against the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion that had sunk our foot­ball in­to depths of De­spair.

We Won that fight.

Six months ago, a New Big­ger bat­tle emerged.

This time against FI­FA, the rulers of World Foot­ball.

This was a fight for Prin­ci­ple, and Jus­tice and I felt we were Well sup­port­ed in our ac­tions by the foot­ball lovers in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

With­in re­cent times it has be­come clear to me, that we are al­so fight­ing against those that we rep­re­sent; The As­so­ci­a­tions, The Clubs, The Teams, Sup­port­ers and Sad­ly....the Play­ers.

In my Heart, I felt hurt by the ac­tions of FI­FA.....there was so much to do, but So lit­tle time giv­en.

We were mak­ing Huge strides, and Yes we made some mis­takes.

I be­lieve that the end must jus­ti­fy the means and that our present course of ac­tions against FI­FA would not re­dound to the ben­e­fit of Trinidad and To­ba­go and to the dreams and as­pi­ra­tions of our present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of foot­ballers.

Hav­ing con­sult­ed with our mem­ber­ship, we took the de­ci­sion to give up our prin­ci­pled strug­gle for the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball and moved for the with­draw­al of court pro­ceed­ings against FI­FA.

How and why these pa­pers were filed af­ter the 3 pm dead­line is be­yond me, and I am sad­dened and dis­ap­point­ed at the turn of events.

Hope­ful­ly, this sus­pen­sion will be short-lived as the mem­ber­ship, ex­ec­u­tive and Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee do what is ben­e­fi­cial for our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of play­ers, clubs, coach and ad­min­is­tra­tors.

As for me, I am Done."

Yours in Sport,

Su­san Joseph-War­rick

2nd Vice Pres­i­dent TTFA

Pres­i­dent TT WoLF.

Vice Pres­i­dent Unit­ed TTFA.

The quar­tet was re­moved from of­fice by FI­FA on March 17 and FI­FA -ap­point­ed a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee on March 27 to man­age the sport which led them to mount a le­gal chal­lenge of FI­FA's de­ci­sion at the Court for Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in Switzer­land in April, with­draw it in May as they could not pay the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs claim­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al bias in favour of FI­FA. The mat­ter was then lodged in the T&T High Court and FI­FA ob­ject­ed claim­ing the TTFA has breached its statutes.

FI­FA had called on the TTFA to with­draw the mat­ter from the High Court but al­though a de­ci­sion was tak­en to do so late Tues­day night, the with­draw­al did not come in time to meet FI­FA’s ul­ti­ma­tum of Sep­tem­ber 23 and by the 3:0 pm (TT Time) set.

In Thurs­day’s let­ter of sus­pen­sion signed by FI­FA’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura read in part:

“We in­form you that, based on the de­ci­sion tak­en by the Bu­reau of the FI­FA Coun­cil on 24 Sep­tem­ber 2020, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has been sus­pend­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and un­til fur­ther no­tice, in ac­cor­dance with ar­ti­cle 16 of the FI­FA statutes.

The de­ci­sion was as a re­sult af­ter the TTFA failed to meet Wednes­day’s 3 pm dead­line which set by FI­FA on Sep­tem­ber 18, for the Unit­ed TTFA team to with­draw their le­gal mat­ter from the T&T High court.

How­ev­er, the em­bat­tled Wal­lace and team with­draw­al ap­pli­ca­tion was made and stamped at 15:23.57 (3:23 pm) on Wednes­day which was af­ter the dead­line of 15:00 AST (21:00 CET) time as out­lined in the FI­FA let­ter.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that while the group’s le­gal team filed an eight-page no­tice of the ap­pli­ca­tion to with­draw the case, in an at­tempt to beat FI­FA’s re­vised ul­ti­ma­tum, the mat­ter will not be ac­tu­al­ly be with­drawn un­til the ap­pli­ca­tion is dealt with by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, who is pre­sid­ing over the case. The mat­ter is still await­ing a hear­ing date.

Fol­low­ing FI­FA's de­ci­sion Hadad wrote:

"Fol­low­ing to­day’s (Thurs­day) de­ci­sion by FI­FA to sus­pend the TTFA I want to reach out to the foot­ball fam­i­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go;

These are ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing times for every­one with the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, and my thoughts are with those im­pact­ed in our com­mu­ni­ties.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the TTFA again finds it­self in a very neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion. The Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee made every ef­fort to pre­vent this sus­pen­sion.

On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, we man­aged to have dead­lines ex­tend­ed, and we ap­pealed to the few in­di­vid­u­als from the pre­vi­ous regime to drop their le­gal ac­tion and do the right thing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, those few in­di­vid­u­als have put their own in­ter­ests be­fore the TTFA’s. They knew very well this ap­proach would have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for foot­ball in our coun­try and yet they still pressed ahead with their own agen­da. Their ac­tions have had no re­gard for the coach­es, the play­ers and the fans in our coun­try. Like the vast ma­jor­i­ty of stake­hold­ers in our game, I am tired of the le­gal wran­gling, the dis­putes and the con­stant fo­cus on off-field prob­lems in our foot­ball. The FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee is the on­ly way for­ward; it still the on­ly rec­og­nized body by FI­FA and the foot­ball fam­i­ly needs to work with us so we can put every­thing in­to get­ting this sus­pen­sion lift­ed.it is in­cum­bent on us to come to­geth­er and fix the TTFA for the good of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."