Na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al teams prepar­ing for com­pe­ti­tion in the fu­ture are now al­lowed to re­sume train­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced on Sat­ur­day at the Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence while pro­vid­ing an up­date on the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic up­date at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's, but he told teams wait­ing for do­mes­tic ac­tion to wait a while longer, giv­ing the as­sur­ance that more will be done for sports once they can do so.

Row­ley's per­mis­sion comes on the heels of a re­quest by na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, for his team to re­sume train­ing ahead of next year's CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing ac­tion in March.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter: "We know that we have a num­ber of sport­ing teams who are anx­ious to get en­gage in prepa­ra­tion for com­pe­ti­tion, at home and abroad, so we are now go­ing to al­low all sport­ing teams that are en­gaged in na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, those teams can now go back to full ac­tiv­i­ty. And of course, if they are to have per­sons oth­er than the team around, they are to re­main in groups of no more than 10."

Dr Row­ley al­so said, "We are with­out spec­ta­tors now but groups of 10 sup­port for the team, for ex­am­ple, you may have a par­ent or two, you may have sup­port staff and so. It is hoped that if the num­bers con­tin­ue to go in the di­rec­tion they are go­ing, we should be able to do a bit more, with re­spect to sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, if we do not see neg­a­tive re­ac­tions to the open­ing up that we are do­ing now, we will see more ca­su­al sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in the con­text of what I said ear­li­er on."

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports soon af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter's an­nounce­men, na­tion­al se­nior coach Fen­wick said they have got the 17th of No­vem­ber as the last FI­FA win­dow to play games and to get play­ers to­geth­er, which he sees as too short no­tice, say­ing they may not get any­thing done in that space of time.

Ac­cord­ing to Fen­wick: "our next win­dow that comes around is World Cup qual­i­fiers in March next year, so we are al­ready right up against it, recog­nis­ing that we are still on a FI­FA ban."

Fen­wick is ex­pect­ing an in­flux of play­ers from In­dia, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, North Amer­i­ca etc to join the team, but he said he will leave every­thing in the hands of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Mean­while, the man­ag­er of the team Basil Thomp­son said while he wel­comes the per­mis­sion by the gov­ern­ment, his team still can­not take the field to pre­pare un­til they re­ceive clear­ance from the sport's world gov­ern­ing body.

FI­FA sus­pend­ed T&TFA on Sep­tem­ber 24 for vi­o­la­tion of its Statutes by go­ing to the lo­cal court to set­tle an is­sue it had with the FI­FA, for ap­point­ing a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to re­place it (TTFA) in March this year.

The ap­point­ment came af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the sta­tus of the TTFA in Feb­ru­ary that con­clud­ed the sport had been on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy by the William Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion, which in­clud­ed vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick.

How­ev­er, the Court of Ap­peal over­turned a de­ci­sion by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in to recog­nise the Wal­lace-led TTFA as the man­agers of foot­ball oF T&T.

The rul­ing of the Ap­peal Court hand­ed FI­FA the pow­er to re-ap­point the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to run lo­cal foot­ball, a de­ci­sion that s set to lift the sus­pen­sion of the FI­FA and en­able T&T to play in all FI­FA-sanc­tioned com­pe­ti­tions.

Thomp­son yes­ter­day said he wel­comes the per­mis­sion of not on­ly his team, but all the oth­er na­tion­al teams to train. How­ev­er, he made it clear that while his staff and play­ers are ready to take the field for ac­tion, they be­lieve it would not be wise to do so un­til the of­fi­cial clear­ance is giv­en by the FI­FA.

The TTFA was giv­en a dead­line date of De­cem­ber 18 to deal with all court-re­lat­ed mat­ters with the FI­FA be­fore the sus­pen­sion will be lift­ed. On­ly Wednes­day (No­vem­ber 3) FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fat­ma Samoura, in a let­ter to the chair­man of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee Robert Hadad, said the FI­FA ac­knowl­edged the ef­forts of the High Court and the sport's mem­ber­ship to re­move all the mat­ters against the FI­FA from the court and call for the re­turn of the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, not­ing that the FI­FA will soon of­fer its re­sponse.

So the na­tion­al ju­nior vol­ley­ball team has been in train­ing.