In­cum­bent T&T Su­per League pres­i­dent Clay­ton Mor­ris will not seek re-elec­tion when the Su­per League AGM and Elec­tion of Of­fi­cers take place on Sep­tem­ber 19.

Mor­ris, a for­mer de­fend­er and cap­tain for the now in­fa­mous 'Strike Squad' foot­ball team of 1989, said he wants to con­tin­ue in his role as a coach as foot­ball has al­ways been his pro­fes­sion and pas­sion. Mor­ris' in­ten­tion to not con­test the elec­tion means that Ryan Ot­t­ley, the De­fence Force man­ag­er, who Guardian Me­dia Sports was told on Mon­day will be seek­ing the lead­er­ship po­si­tion of the Su­per League, could be the lone can­di­date, come Sep­tem­ber 19.

Ac­cord­ing to Mor­ris: "As I have al­ready stat­ed I'm not in­ter­est­ed in run­ning for the T&TSL pres­i­den­cy, and as coach I will not be con­test­ing if and when the elec­tion is called. I was al­ways con­sid­er­ing tak­ing up the pres­i­dent's role. It was al­ways a strug­gle for me men­tal­ly be­cause hav­ing to car­ry out my du­ty as a coach at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, for which foot­ball is my pas­sion.

It is my pro­fes­sion, so it was al­ways a chal­lenge or a strug­gle in tak­ing up the pres­i­den­tial po­si­tion, but then when I was told to car­ry on for just eight months, I said I would give it a try. As a strong be­liev­er in the Almighty, I saw it where God want­ed me to step in­to the po­si­tion to bring that calm and tran­quil­li­ty that we have now in the Su­per League."

Mor­ris was elect­ed in the midst of a tense en­vi­ron­ment on No­vem­ber 29 last year, in which an agree­ment had to be reached unan­i­mous­ly among the clubs, to use a vir­tu­al plat­form for elec­tions, for the first time in the Su­per League's his­to­ry due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He won the po­si­tion un­op­posed af­ter his lone chal­lenger Jame­son Rigues, a vice pres­i­dent of the T&TSL, pulled out at the very last mo­ment. At that elec­tion, on­ly nine of the ex­pect­ed 24 mem­bers vot­ed.

Ot­t­ley's De­fence Force is one of sev­en clubs that were sus­pend­ed by the Su­per League back in 2018 for ei­ther be­ing non-com­pli­ant, or for non-pay­ment of reg­is­tra­tion fees to play in the League un­der then Pres­i­dent Kei­th Look Loy. Some clubs that did not pay reg­is­tra­tion fees that year (2018), al­so suf­fered a fur­ther sus­pen­sion in 2019, for not play­ing in a TTSL tour­na­ment for two con­sec­u­tive years.

Fol­low­ing the AGM that pre­ced­ed the elec­tion last year, a de­ci­sion was tak­en for the sev­en sus­pend­ed clubs- De­fence Force, Cen­tral 500 FC, Harlem Strik­ers FC, Mara­bel­la FCC, 1976 Phoenix, WASA FC and the Youth Stars to get their house in or­der with re­gards to be­com­ing com­pli­ant with­in a six-month pe­ri­od be­fore they can be giv­en vot­ing rights at the elec­tion.

Mor­ris said on­ly the Army Coast-Guard Com­bi­na­tion team fol­lowed in­struc­tions and has be­come com­pli­ant. To­ba­go team 1976 Phoenix be­gan the process to be­come com­pli­ant but did not com­plete it.

Mor­ris said the teams were giv­en suf­fi­cient time to be­come com­pli­ant. They were giv­en un­til June this year to fix all doc­u­men­ta­tion con­cern­ing be­com­ing a vot­ing mem­ber again, and if they have not done so then they will not vote.

Mor­ris was sat­is­fied with his per­for­mance de­spite the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that threat­ened to make his tenure use­less. He said his ex­ec­u­tive was able to achieve a lot ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly, say­ing: "Most of the meet­ings we had, they took the form of dis­cus­sions, where­as, with ar­gu­ments, you want to find out who's right. With dis­cus­sions, you find out what is right, and that has trick­led down to the mem­ber­ship.

That kind of fight­ing in the Su­per League is no more. For the AGM you would nor­mal­ly have an ac­tiv­i­ty re­port at which you would have a break­down of the games played etc, but this time around, we have ac­tiv­i­ties which we were able to ac­com­plish ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly from the Board lev­el. I was able to meet with the mem­bers via tele­phone to bring back com­mu­ni­ca­tion."