At long last, lo­cal foot­ball ap­pears ready to get start­ed again.

In many coun­tries around the world, com­pet­i­tive foot­ball for the top play­ers is be­ing played and has been play­ing for sev­er­al months, so why has it tak­en T&T such a long time?

We are be­ing told that this new TT Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) has been ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 months in the mak­ing. Wow, 18 months! It should be the best-planned foot­ball league in the his­to­ry of world foot­ball.

Please for­give me, but I re­call there was a com­mit­tee formed a few years ago with Lind­say Gillette as the chair­man and they set about with a for­mu­la for a new league to de­vel­op the Pro League and have a sus­tain­able sec­ond di­vi­sion with pro­mo­tion and rel­e­ga­tion. My un­der­stand­ing was that a pro­pos­al was pre­sent­ed to the pow­ers that be at the time, but the usu­al pol­i­tics stepped in and it was just left hang­ing be­cause it sup­pos­ed­ly did not fit the cri­te­ria that some of the ‘big boys’ had in mind and it was just left to fall by the way­side.

In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, the As­cen­sion League had quite a suc­cess­ful tour­na­ment and then the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League al­so had a very suc­cess­ful 2022 sea­son with large crowds at­tend­ing the games, es­pe­cial­ly the fi­nals in both the League and In­ter­col. It is there­fore be­yond me to un­der­stand why this TTPFL did not get off the ground at least 12 months ago.

I know there will be 101 rea­sons why it took 18 months of plan­ning to get a ball kicked but in the mean­while, and per­haps the most de­struc­tive fact is that T&T’s foot­ballers have suf­fered from a huge lack of play­ing time. How come the Ja­maica Pre­mier League (JPL) start­ed at least a year ago? Is the JPL dif­fer­ent? The an­swer to that is yes, they seem to be more struc­tured and while I am sure there is pol­i­tics in­volved, it has not kept them back from or­gan­is­ing their play­ers in good, top-class com­pe­ti­tion.

T&T’s men’s head coach An­gus Eve has been beg­ging and plead­ing for com­pet­i­tive foot­ball to re­sume at the top lev­el as he has been at a se­ri­ous dis­ad­van­tage in terms of as­sess­ing the abil­i­ty of his play­ers in a com­pet­i­tive set­ting. Hope­ful­ly, we can see the So­ca War­riors fi­nal­ly ben­e­fit­ing from this league with many more young play­ers hold­ing their hands up and try­ing to make the break­through at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

The start of the league hap­pens on March 10 and runs for just about two months then they go in­to a knock­out play­off. Thank­ful­ly, be­cause of the As­cen­sion League, most of these clubs would have been ready for the start of this league hav­ing at least been ex­posed to some lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion.

When one goes through the list of the teams/clubs, a fan men­tioned to me he would have liked to have seen more com­mu­ni­ty teams in­volved and I could not ar­gue with his point. The com­mu­ni­ty teams in T&T now seem to gath­er the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port in games sim­ply be­cause one is able to iden­ti­fy with the team. Wouldn’t I sup­port Cunu­pia FC if I was liv­ing in Cunu­pia and its en­vi­rons? Hav­ing said that, bet­ter mar­ket­ing from the league ad­min­is­tra­tors is des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Foot­ball fans want to come and see ex­cit­ing foot­ball but al­so play­ers who have style, flair and panache but these play­ers have to be sold to the pub­lic for them to come out and see who are the var­i­ous stars of the teams.

This league has a lot of work to do. If you re­call, at most Pro League match­es, crowds did not come out as the foot­ball played by some of the clubs was sub-stan­dard. Af­ter you go once to a game and it is drab and lack­ing in ba­sic skills, you will not go back. Even if the score­line sug­gests a com­pet­i­tive game, if the abil­i­ty shown by play­ers is lack­ing, the pub­lic will be very un­like­ly to sup­port con­sis­tent­ly.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball in T&T is per­ceived by many to be at rock bot­tom and it is clear that peo­ple no longer vote for who can do the job but rather, friends vote for friends and they look for favours in ex­change for their votes. It is some­thing that plagues many na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies in this coun­try but foot­ball is cer­tain­ly one that suf­fers the most.

Run­ning a com­pet­i­tive foot­ball league will not bring back the trust that lo­cal foot­ball fans have in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the game. What brings back trust is en­sur­ing that the peo­ple who get in­to po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty have a high lev­el of in­tegri­ty, hon­esty and a clean record that they are trust­ed to run a steady ship and keep it afloat. In ad­di­tion, play­ers have to be­lieve the ad­min­is­tra­tion is work­ing for their bet­ter­ment as for far too long in T&T, play­ers do not trust ad­min­is­tra­tors.

When one looks at T&T’s stand­ings re­gion­al­ly, it is go­ing to take some time be­fore the coun­try can get back to the top and re­place Ja­maica as the lead­ing Caribbean ter­ri­to­ry when it comes to foot­ball. This could very well be the start but it can’t be a stop-start sce­nario. Play­ers need to be play­ing foot­ball through­out the year with a two-month break be­fore the sea­son starts again. That is the on­ly way in which this coun­try’s foot­ballers will im­prove and as­cend to the top of the lad­der.

I am pleased that the clubs will each stand to ben­e­fit from a cash in­jec­tion from FI­FA and the gov­ern­ment. I sin­cere­ly hope the clubs use the funds wise­ly. Yes, pay the play­ers hand­some­ly but al­so en­sure that the very clubs have a prop­er de­vel­op­ment struc­ture in place. The clubs have to start to stand up on their own two feet rather than look for hand­outs. This is a great start for them how­ev­er, they must be­gin to mar­ket them­selves and their play­ers to at­tract spon­sor­ship and have mul­ti­ple fundrais­ers to keep the club tick­ing. We have gone past the dread­ed COVID lock­downs when noth­ing was hap­pen­ing (no fundrais­ers etc.) to keep your club afloat it is now up to all the clubs to get up and seek their own source of funds. I know it is go­ing to be a rough road with some clubs to be­come self-sus­tain­able but to be hon­est, that has to be the way for­ward to get the sup­port­ers in­volved as I am sure some will have ideas to keep clubs on an up­ward trend.

Let us keep our fin­gers and toes crossed that this is the start of the jour­ney to see T&T’s tal­ent­ed foot­ballers take its foot­ball out of the dark ages and as the late great icon the Black Stal­in sang, “bet­ter days are com­ing”.

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.