“It is far bet­ter to be free to gov­ern or mis­gov­ern your­self than to be gov­erned by any­body else.” —Kwame Nkrumah

Kieron “Bo” Ed­wards is the new pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA). Ed­wards de­feat­ed Col­in Wharfe at the Elec­tive Con­gress 38-19 on Sat­ur­day at the Home of Foot­ball in Cou­va.

The TTFA last held elec­tions for ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers in No­vem­ber 2019. William Wal­lace de­feat­ed David-John Williams to be­come TTFA pres­i­dent. FI­FA re­moved the Wal­lace-led ex­ec­u­tive from of­fice in March 2020 and ap­point­ed a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to run the day-to-day af­fairs of the TTFA. It was al­leged that FI­FA’s pick in that race didn’t win. Yet again the per­cep­tion is that FI­FA’s pre­ferred slate didn’t win on Sat­ur­day.

While there are those who with good cause will feel ap­pre­hen­sive about FI­FA’s re­la­tion­ship with the new­ly mint­ed TTFA pres­i­dent, his biggest chal­lenge will em­anate from with­in his own camp of sup­port­ers as he will have to man­age their ex­pec­ta­tions and sense of en­ti­tle­ment giv­en what they may con­sid­er as their con­tri­bu­tion to his land­slide win.

Many will seek to shape his agen­da and ful­fil their per­son­al am­bi­tions un­der the guise of be­ing his clos­est and most trust­ed al­ly. Be wise pres­i­dent Ed­wards, you had the courage to take on the chal­lenge. Be care­ful of those who as­pired to be the leader but now fash­ion them­selves as king-mak­ers or the re­al pow­er be­hind your throne. Tem­per your words. Give every­one a fair start, re­gard­less of what you may have heard about them. Two wrongs nev­er make a right. Nor can you right a wrong by com­mit­ting an­oth­er wrong.

The enor­mous po­ten­tial of “So­ca War­riors” foot­ball and its play­ers need no re­peat­ing. Foot­ball glob­al­ly is said to be the beau­ti­ful game and is ac­knowl­edged as the num­ber one team sport in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion. Here on the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, it’s no dif­fer­ent. Foot­ball is nu­mero uno (num­ber one) in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion. Track and field is the num­ber one sport when it comes to in­ter­na­tion­al achieve­ment be it World Cham­pi­onships and the Olympics. How­ev­er, foot­ball cap­tures the in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens every day. The Olympics gains wider pub­lic in­ter­est once every four years. Crick­et some will ar­gue gen­er­ates sim­i­lar in­ter­est as foot­ball. But it cer­tain­ly will run sec­ond to foot­ball in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

That be­ing said, long sto­ry short, pres­i­dent Ed­wards has his work cut out for him. To my mind, it’s im­por­tant that he has a suc­cess­ful tenure. His life ex­pe­ri­ences—good, bad and in­dif­fer­ent pre­pared him for his turn as leader of T&T foot­ball. The neu­trals and all those who have the best in­ter­est of foot­ball will sup­port him and give him a chance.

Like all lo­cal sports—foot­ball has to be en­tre­pre­neur­ial, fu­ture-think­ing, mar­ket­ing and brand de­vel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed and in­no­v­a­tive. In re­spect of good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are non-ne­go­tiable with ze­ro tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion in­clud­ing il­le­gal gam­bling. “Bo knows” what needs to be done. The strat­e­gy adopt­ed over the many years that has led to this point in time, may not be an ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy in his new role. The first test he will face is step­ping out from the shad­ows and ghosts of the way things were done.

The pen­du­lum and mo­men­tum has swung in his di­rec­tion.

T&T foot­ball is in for in­ter­est­ing and ex­cit­ing times.

All eyes are on “Bo”, be­cause Bo knows.

“I de­cid­ed to step out­side of my com­fort zone and do things that I would nev­er, ever do.”—Bo Jack­son.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.