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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

PM wants no more excuses from TTFA

by

Walter Alibey
1925 days ago
20191119
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right, shakes hands with FIFA president Gianni Infantino after unveiling the plaque during the opening ceremony for the Home of Football in Balmain, Couva, yesterday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right, shakes hands with FIFA president Gianni Infantino after unveiling the plaque during the opening ceremony for the Home of Football in Balmain, Couva, yesterday.

RISHI RAFGOONATH

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty should have no more ex­cus­es for its poor state, both on and off the field, in the fu­ture now.

His com­ment came on Mon­day as he wit­nessed the open­ing of the Home of Foot­ball at Bal­main, Cou­va, by Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams.

The mil­lion-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty was con­struct­ed on land do­nat­ed to the TTFA by the Gov­ern­ment and fund­ing came via FI­FA grant.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress in front a large crowd, Row­ley, sig­nalling that the time had come for the sport to be­come self-suf­fi­cient, said, “In our schools, we have boys and girls who are re­ly­ing on the man­age­ment of this sport and not on the Gov­ern­ment.

“The Gov­ern­ment has played its part and will con­tin­ue to play its part, but what is miss­ing is the man­age­ment we used to have when peo­ple served for ser­vice sake and pro­duced from it the tal­ent that was wait­ing for that help­ing hand.”

The Prime Min­is­ter, who, along with FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no and CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani, was in­vit­ed to of­fi­cial­ly open the fa­cil­i­ty, added, “To­day ladies and gen­tle­men, if we are fa­mil­iar with fail­ure, it is in the area of the man­age­ment of our sport. We fea­tured promi­nent­ly in many sports at the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els, led by vol­un­teers with far less re­sources than we have now.

“My friend Hase­ly Craw­ford is here, he won an Olympic Gold medal and we had no sta­di­um and no track, but he won it. To­day, we have these fa­cil­i­ties and we now have ab­solute­ly no ex­cuse if we be­have our­selves and ac­cept from the tax­pay­ers the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars and the land we have made avail­able to those of you who man­age foot­ball.”

He added, “So hav­ing part­nered with you, hav­ing part­nered with foot­ball to make this pub­lic as­set land avail­able to you, and mon­ey avail­able to those in­volved in the man­age­ment of the game, the tax­pay­ers can ex­pect no less but a dra­mat­ic im­prove­ment, and a full use of the fa­cil­i­ty in the vi­sion in which it was pre­sent­ed and the way it was de­signed.”

The fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing as­set for the TTFA that will ease the sport’s de­pen­den­cy on gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate T&T fund­ing.

FI­FA boss In­fan­ti­no, who al­so had a hand in con­vinc­ing Row­ley to hand over the land for the con­struc­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty a few years ago, called on Gov­ern­ment to name the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um the new Ato Boldon Na­tion­al Sta­di­um of T&T. Look­ing at Row­ley, he al­so jok­ing­ly said that if the TTFA is giv­en the sta­di­um to run, the Gov­ern­ment can still run the Com­mon­wealth Games in 2021.

He thanked Row­ley, Mon­tagliani, John-Williams and all those who con­tributed to the Home of Foot­ball be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty, not­ing that when he was cam­paign­ing to be­come FI­FA pres­i­dent, he came to T&T not ex­pect­ing to find some­one who had the heart beat­ing for foot­ball in T&T.

“I was not be­liev­ing to find some­one like this in T&T, I have to say the truth be­cause T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion was more or less in the same state as FI­FA. David was say­ing in sham­bles, and I said sham­bles was maybe a com­pli­ment.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, John-Williams said when they as­sumed of­fice it con­firmed to them that the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quired re­struc­tur­ing and need­ed to be put on a sound fi­nan­cial path. He said while some may ex­pect him to beat his chest for the con­struc­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty he would do no such thing, as it was just one spoke in the strate­gic wheel that was quick­ly ac­cel­er­at­ing to put T&T foot­ball on a sus­tain­able path.

Af­ter­wards, Row­ley, In­fan­ti­no, Mon­tagliani and a large crowd of dig­ni­taries that in­clud­ed for­mer French in­ter­na­tion­al Youri Djorka­eff were tak­en on a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty.

But while scores turned up for the event, mem­bers of the Unit­ed TTFA slate head­ed by William Wal­lace, who will be tak­ing on John-Williams and his slate for the TTFA helm this Sun­day, were ab­sent. How­ev­er, Richard Fer­gu­son, the oth­er pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, was on hand.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al oth­er for­mer play­ers, coach­es and ad­min­is­tra­tive mem­bers were on hand, among them Os­mond Down­er, Ron La For­rest, Lester Os­una, Bertille St Clair and Brent San­cho.


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