Two of the three slates for the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's No­vem­ber 24 elec­tions could join forces.

Guardian Me­dia Sports has been re­li­ably in­formed that the merg­er is be­ing weighed strict­ly be­cause of fi­nan­cial is­sues, which have been the main talk­ing point ahead of the elec­tions.

A source with­in the elec­tion cir­cles said Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Richard Fer­gu­son has been ap­proached by of­fi­cials of both the Unit­ed TTFA slate, led by William Wal­lace and from in­cum­bent David John-Williams' team to join forces to oust each oth­ers' com­peti­tor.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Fer­gu­son's slate was re­duced by one man fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of vice-pres­i­dent can­di­date Ed­di­son Dean, of Club San­do, ear­li­er this week to join the Unit­ed TTFA. A source said Fer­gu­son may con­sid­er merg­er talks if he is ap­proached but was al­so just as ready to go it alone. The source said Fer­gu­son was aware of a ru­mour of a pos­si­ble merg­er of slates but in­tends to en­sure that the fu­ture of foot­ball is placed in safe hands.

Wal­lace's slate com­pris­es vice-pres­i­dents Sam Phillip, Clynt Tay­lor and Su­san Joseph-War­rick, pres­i­dent of the Women's League Foot­ball, while in­cum­bent John-Williams' team in­cludes vice-pres­i­dents Col­in Par­tap, An­tho­ny Moore and Sel­by Browne, Vet­er­an Foot­ball Foun­da­tion of T&T (VFF) pres­i­dent.

Wal­lace said nei­ther he nor any mem­ber of his team had been ap­proached but said he would wel­come the sup­port of any team. The Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) pres­i­dent said his group has al­ways said that they can­not do it alone and would wel­come the sup­port of any­one will­ing to join them on their mis­sion.

It was just Sat­ur­day that Wal­lace joined his group col­league Kei­th Look Loy in rolling out a com­pre­hen­sive plan for how they in­tend to man­age the af­fairs of the game if they are elect­ed in­to of­fice. His plan high­light­ed glob­al sports­wear gi­ants Nike among a list of in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sors set to pump more than $30 mil­lion in­to lo­cal foot­ball should they be elect­ed.

With just about 16 days to go be­fore the TTFA elec­tions, Moore, of the John-Williams slate, said he too was un­aware of any­one be­ing ap­proached to join forces. How­ev­er, he said he would un­der­stand why the slates would want to merge.

"Both John-Williams and Fer­gu­son are the on­ly busi­ness­men who own teams and would, there­fore, see things dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­ers."

He not­ed that mon­ey is crit­i­cal to run­ning T&T's foot­ball af­fairs ef­fec­tive­ly and as busi­ness­men they would know how to com­mer­cialise the sport.

"We must re­mem­ber that at the TTFA, we are not yet out of the woods with debt," Moore said.

"We have in­her­it­ed debt from the Ray­mond Tim Kee ad­min­is­tra­tion and it seems to be ris­ing ever so of­ten. The ad­min­is­tra­tors of the sport would have to in­tro­duce a debt-re­struc­tur­ing plan to cope with the debt while en­sur­ing pru­dent man­age­ment at the same time."