Be­lieve it or not, I was about to start my col­umn on the stun­ning vic­to­ry of the Los An­ge­les Lak­ers over the Mi­a­mi Heat in the NBA fi­nals. Since the vis­it of the leg­endary Ka­reem Ab­dul-Jab­bar to T&T’s shores, I have al­ways been a fan of the Lak­ers.

I had pre­pared how my en­try in­to bas­ket­ball came about etc., but then I was stopped in my tracks and made aware of an­oth­er vic­to­ry - one that is be­ing re­ferred to as “vic­to­ry to the in­de­pen­dent and sov­er­eign peo­ple of T&T”.

Quite a num­ber of peo­ple may be con­fused as vic­to­ry and T&T foot­ball seem to be two com­bi­na­tions that haven’t co-ex­ist­ed for quite some time. Per­haps “we are banned for sure now” is one view while some may counter, “So what? We can’t even beat St Kitts & Nevis”.

What­ev­er your point of view, it doesn’t re­al­ly mat­ter as Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in hand­ed down her 23-page judge­ment on Tues­day night in favour of the Unit­ed TTFA against the mighty and pow­er­ful FI­FA. To be open and hon­est, I ex­pect­ed her to hand down this judge­ment con­sid­er­ing some of the facts which were set out in her pre­vi­ous rul­ing in the mat­ter.

Since I am not an at­tor­ney, there is lit­tle need for me to deal with the 23 pages of her judge­ment and be­fore I ad­dress the con­clu­sion, as that is the most im­por­tant part of the rul­ing, I must pay re­spect to the Unit­ed TTFA mem­bers for the for­ti­tude they have ex­hib­it­ed in the face of staunch crit­i­cism.

They must be some of the most vil­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als in foot­ball in re­cent mem­o­ry - they have been ma­ligned, called names, cast as liars, ac­cused of not car­ing about youths, not car­ing about foot­ball in T&T and prob­a­bly sworn at face-to-face by in­di­vid­u­als who thought that their mo­tive was down­right self­ish. Yet, they ig­nored the crit­i­cism, fought and stood up for what they be­lieved in.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, I have grown to ad­mire them for their re­silience to with­stand all the pres­sure for the stance they have tak­en. In a zoom meet­ing in which I was a part of, I con­grat­u­lat­ed Os­mond “Mr Con­sti­tu­tion” Down­er for a ques­tion he tabled by in­quir­ing who ex­act­ly is FI­FA su­ing since the Unit­ed TTFA is not recog­nised by FI­FA and as far as FI­FA was con­cerned, (William) Wal­lace and com­pa­ny had no stand­ing in T&T’s foot­ball.

Be­fore I in­formed the meet­ing about my own club’s foot­ball com­mit­tee’s de­ci­sion, I con­grat­u­lat­ed the Unit­ed TTFA in my per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty for the prin­ci­pled stance that they were adopt­ing. But I hon­est­ly thought they would have backed down. It takes in­di­vid­u­als of re­al steel to with­stand what they have gone through in the last cou­ple of months but it al­so says that when you are not in a fight and in some­one else’s shoes, you re­al­ly would not un­der­stand how they feel. In oth­er words, you have to be part of the move­ment to un­der­stand the fight.

From day one, I said what FI­FA did to our du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive was wrong. In fact, every­one, in­clud­ing those per­sons against the stance that Wal­lace and com­pa­ny was tak­ing, agreed with me.

How­ev­er, there was al­ways a “but” fol­lowed by “we will get banned by FI­FA un­less we take this mat­ter out of court”. The fear of T&T be­ing banned was def­i­nite­ly a huge fac­tor that in­flu­enced why many in­di­vid­u­als and clubs backed down. I re­call from ear­ly on the thought process was that FI­FA can’t do this to a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed body and fight them we must.

When FI­FA re­alised what was hap­pen­ing to their case, sud­den­ly pan­ic set in and the one weapon they had was to threat­en lit­tle T&T with be­ing banned. No­body in their right mind (in­clud­ing me) wants to see us get banned, but at the end of the day, where do you draw the line? While the point has been made to think about the youths and their fu­ture, some­times, one has to make some harsh de­ci­sions. I re­mem­ber Wal­lace was se­vere­ly chas­tised for say­ing there might be col­lat­er­al dam­age and based on this lat­est judge­ment, there will be col­lat­er­al dam­age.

Three things stand out for me with the judge­ment and I did not need a court of law to guide me. 1 - “The Court de­clares that the re­moval of the du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive on 17/3/20 by the de­fen­dant is il­le­gal null and void and of no ef­fect”.

I preached that months ago - FI­FA was wrong af­ter three and a half months fol­low­ing a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion of the TTFA to re­move the elect­ed of­fi­cers. 2 - “The Court de­clares that the ap­point­ment of a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee to in­ter­fere in the af­fairs of the TTFA is null and void and of no ef­fect”. I preached that months ago as to where did this nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee come from? What was their stand­ing in the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty and who did they rep­re­sent? FI­FA?

Third­ly and cer­tain­ly the most damn­ing, “The Court de­clares that the de­ci­sion of the De­fen­dant dat­ed 17/3/20 to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee was made in bad faith and for an im­prop­er and il­le­gal mo­tive”.

Dear me! That one hit hard but is it sur­pris­ing? Any right-think­ing in­di­vid­ual knew that FI­FA act­ed in bad faith and the feel­ing was that there was some ul­te­ri­or mo­tive be­hind FI­FA’s ac­tions. If you are around the foot­ball cir­cles, you would hear all sorts of rea­sons but trust me, there are those who know ex­act­ly why FI­FA re­moved the ex­ec­u­tive and moved in with their nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

So where do we go from here? I ex­pect the next move will be from FI­FA, but I al­so ex­pect that Wal­lace and com­pa­ny will al­so make some moves of their own. The Prime Min­is­ter’s his­to­ry les­son on so­cial me­dia last night com­par­ing the court vic­to­ry of the Unit­ed TTFA against FI­FA to a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry can on­ly be de­scribed as naive. Is the PM sug­gest­ing for a mo­ment that T&T is too lit­tle and in­signif­i­cant to take a prin­ci­pled stance against FI­FA for fear of back­lash?

This pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty may very well give us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­build our foot­ball from the grass­roots lev­el as now will not be the time to turn our backs on foot­ball. I would ex­pect the Min­istry of Sports would step for­ward and even cor­po­rate T&T to try to build our foot­ball, our leagues, as­so­ci­a­tions, clubs etc so when we do get back on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, we will be ready. Let's stand as one for our na­tion just as our mot­to taught us - to­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve.

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