Kei­th Clement

Lead Ed­i­tor Sports

Fol­low­ing news that the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has been sus­pend­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect by FI­FA and un­til fur­ther no­tice Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out to sev­er­al per­sons of the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship to get re­spons­es re­gard­ing the Unit­ed TTFA team fail­ure to meet the Sep­tem­ber 23, 3:00 pm dead­line set by FI­FA on Sep­tem­ber 18, to with­draw their le­gal mat­ter from the T&T High court.

Sev­er­al of them de­cid­ed that they don't want to go on record but they ex­pressed con­cerns with what they deemed 'the in­tent of the ac­tion by the last minute as the dead­line time ap­proached to have the mat­ter with­drawn from the T&T courts.

The em­bat­tled TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive team's de­ci­sion to with­draw their con­tro­ver­sial case against FI­FA is yet to be of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised since the ap­pli­ca­tion was made and stamped at 15:23.57 (3:23 pm) on Wednes­day which was af­ter the dead­line of 15:00 AST (21:00 CET) time as out­lined in the FI­FA let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 18.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that while the group's le­gal team filed an eight-page no­tice of the ap­pli­ca­tion to with­draw the case, in an at­tempt to beat FI­FA's re­vised ul­ti­ma­tum of Wednes­day 23, at 3:00 pm (TT Time), the mat­ter will not be ac­tu­al­ly be with­drawn un­til the ap­pli­ca­tion is dealt with by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, who is pre­sid­ing over the case.

On Thurs­day, Guardian Me­dia Sports reached out Robert Hadad, the chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) and asked: 'Did you, FI­FA le­gal Team or FI­FA get any doc­u­ments of no­tice from William Wal­lace' le­gal team to date re­gard­ing the with­draw­al of the le­gal mat­ter in the T&T high court?'...He re­spond­ed, "No".

Dr Emir Crowne, one of the at­tor­neys from the Unit­ed TTFA le­gal team when con­tact­ed and asked on Thurs­day: "If FI­FA lawyers were served with the ap­pli­ca­tion & af­fi­davit re­gard­ing the with­draw­al he re­spond­ed: "If it's about the TTFA mat­ter, I un­for­tu­nate­ly can't com­ment as it's still be­fore the Courts."

The ap­pli­ca­tion which high­lights 23 grounds for which the with­draw­al is be­ing made, can ei­ther be dealt with in the ab­sence of the par­ties with the de­ci­sion be­ing sub­se­quent­ly sent by Gob­in or can be dealt with on Oc­to­ber 9, when she was ex­pect­ed to ref­er­ee the tri­al of the case. The tri­al date could al­so be brought for­ward in or­der to re­solve the is­sue.

In an af­fi­davit which com­prised ten pages and bears the court stamp and time as 15:02.03 (T&T 3:02 pm) at­tached to the ap­pli­ca­tion, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, Wal­lace sought to ex­plain his and his team's de­ci­sion to grudg­ing­ly with­draw their case.

"To ask this court for per­mis­sion to with­draw this claim on the day be­fore Re­pub­lic Day (Sep­tem­ber 24), and in so do­ing tac­it­ly ac­cept­ing that foot­ball in T&T con­tin­ues to be at the whims and fan­cy of the De­fen­dant, who is bul­ly­ing and co­erc­ing the TTFA in­to bend­ing its knee, makes me feel phys­i­cal­ly sick," Wal­lace said.

"It is one of the hard­est things I have ever had to do," he added.

Wal­lace, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary School Foot­ball League (SS­FL) sug­gest­ed that their de­ci­sion was based on feed­back from TTFA stake­hold­ers, which was so­licit­ed af­ter he and his team not­ed strange de­vel­op­ments in the sport re­gion­al­ly.

He said on Mon­day he was in­formed that FI­FA re­gion­al af­fil­i­ate CON­CA­CAF had sched­uled the draw for its 2021 Gold Cup for this week­end.

"I can say that this is un­usu­al be­cause the Gold Cup (held every two years) is not un­til Ju­ly 2021 and nor­mal­ly the draw usu­al­ly hap­pens ap­prox­i­mate­ly two months be­fore the tour­na­ment," Wal­lace said.

He ad­mit­ted that it was this that led him and his team to call the meet­ing on Tues­day as a pos­si­ble sus­pen­sion would mean no chance of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the tour­na­ment.

In a sep­a­rate but re­lat­ed press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the ex­ec­u­tive ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments and not­ed that 21 stake­hold­ers vot­ed for them to with­draw the ac­tion, while eight vot­ed for it to con­tin­ue. Three ab­stained.

In his court fil­ings, Wal­lace, a for­mer na­tion­al team man­ag­er, claimed that de­spite the vote many mem­bers agreed that FI­FA was act­ing in bad faith by seek­ing to com­pel them to with­draw un­der the threat of the as­so­ci­a­tion and by ex­ten­sion, the coun­try, be­ing sus­pend­ed and oth­er sanc­tions.

"My firm view is that they are act­ing out of fear and not in the long-term best in­ter­ests of the TTFA," he said.

On Thurs­day, Brent San­cho, the act­ing chair­man of the T&T Pro League and who has been chal­leng­ing the Unit­ed TTFA de­ci­sion to take FI­FA to the T&T Courts rather than Court for Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in Switzer­land, be­lieve that the gen­er­al meet­ing called by the Unit­ed TTFA on Tues­day was set-up to give the mem­ber­ship the im­pres­sion that they (Unit­ed TTFA) re­al­ly want­ed to get meet­ing's view to move for­ward.

San­cho said, "Af­ter the vot­ing 21-8 to with­draw the mat­ter; 8 to stay and fight; and 3 ab­sten­tions, the meet­ing asked the chair­man (Wal­lace) what next and he did not an­swer. In fact, af­ter read­ing the with­draw­al doc­u­ments it is crys­tal clear that eight votes are what the ap­pli­ca­tion and af­fi­davit are based up­on and not the 21 del­e­gates who vot­ed to with­draw the mat­ter from court."

The Cen­tral FC own­er point­ed out that every ac­tion by the Unit­ed TTFA team from Sep­tem­ber 22 to miss­ing the dead­line Sep­tem­ber 23, has been in­ten­tion­al­ly de­signed to get the TTFA sus­pend­ed.

He said, "Sep­tem­ber 22: Unit­ed TTFA last-minute “in­for­mal” mem­ber meet­ing to at­tempt to show they lis­tened to mem­ber­ship and most im­por­tant­ly to mask their rea­sons for ap­par­ent­ly with­draw­ing case: “to with­draw based on the will of the mem­ber­ship - the mem­bers vot­ed to do it – against TTFA Unit­ed’s will, and on Sep­tem­ber 23 the fol­low­ing hap­pened:

1. TTFA Unit­ed for­mal­ly ex­press their plans:

2.       At ap­prox.1:30 pm lo­cal time (and 1-hour ½ be­fore the dead­line to with­draw case) they is­sue an of­fi­cial me­dia state­ment:

3.       At 3:02 PM (in­ten­tion­al­ly af­ter the FI­FA dead­line ex­pired) they lodge af­fi­davits be­fore the High Court to re­quest that case be with­drawn. Way it is redact­ed shows ma­li­cious in­ten­tion for it to be re­ject­ed or to claim co­er­cion af­ter sus­pen­sion and con­tin­ue with the case. 

4.       At 6:30 pm and through the me­dia, Wal­lace tries to jus­ti­fy why his name is not on me­dia re­lease:

5.  Sep­tem­ber 24, a pub­lic hol­i­day in T&T, rea­son why they al­so kept the mat­ter se­cret hop­ing FI­FA would sus­pend the TTFA be­fore any court de­ci­sion was reached. This se­ries of events clear­ly shows TTFA Unit­ed’s plot to play vic­tims and paint FI­FA as the mon­ster who sus­pend­ed them, and while their in­tent is to con­tin­ue with their bat­tle.

Ac­cord­ing to a del­e­gate who at­tend­ed the meet­ing and spoke to us on the con­di­tion anonymi­ty: "With­out point­ing fin­gers or cast­ing blame, I think Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball has ex­pe­ri­enced ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing times, and we have chal­leng­ing times ahead of us. Foot­ball is large­ly po­lit­i­cal and it has got­ten the bet­ter (or worst) of us. We need true uni­ty and whole­some, in­clu­sive di­a­logue with all stake­hold­ers if we are to ever heal and move for­ward for the good of the game and most im­por­tant­ly the play­ers of the game."

Through the law­suit, Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips, and Su­san Joseph-War­rick were seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion to re­move them on March 17, and re­place them with a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing of busi­ness­man Hadad, at­tor­ney Judy Daniel, and re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano was null, void, and of no le­gal or bind­ing ef­fect.

They were al­so seek­ing a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion bar­ring FI­FA from med­dling in the TTFA's af­fairs by al­leged­ly seek­ing to cir­cum­vent the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by re­mov­ing du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Wal­lace and his team ini­tial­ly brought pro­ceed­ings against FI­FA in the Court for Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) in April but with­draw it in May as they could not pay the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs.

Their po­si­tion was part­ly due to FI­FA's pol­i­cy to not pay its share of the fees and CAS's rules, which re­quire the oth­er par­ty to pay the full costs when the oth­er fails in its oblig­a­tions.

Af­ter the case was filed, FI­FA ap­plied for it to be struck out as it claimed that the TTFA by virtue of its mem­ber­ship with FI­FA agreed to for­go all le­gal ac­tion in lo­cal courts in favour of pro­ceed­ings be­fore the CAS.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was ini­tial­ly blanked by Gob­in, who ruled on Au­gust 13, that the lo­cal courts were the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum to re­solve the dis­pute.

FI­FA ap­pealed with a hear­ing set for Oc­to­ber 21.

While the ap­peal was still pend­ing, Gob­in set the date for the tri­al of the case for Oc­to­ber 9 and gave FI­FA an ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence. FI­FA failed to meet the dead­line as it main­tained its po­si­tion that it did not ac­cept the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court in the mat­ter.

Wal­lace and his team al­so ob­tained an in­junc­tion against the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee af­ter it at­tempt­ed to fa­cil­i­tate an ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing (EGM) among mem­bers to vote to with­draw the case and recog­nised the NC as the ad­min­is­tra­tors of T&T foot­ball.

The in­junc­tion, which will re­main in place un­til dis­charged by Gob­in, was not op­posed by FI­FA and was grant­ed.

Wal­lace and his col­leagues are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, Crys­tal Paul, and Ja­son Jones, while Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, Jonathan Walk­er and Cherie Gopie are ap­pear­ing for FI­FA.