The As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment's sched­uled start in March may not hap­pen af­ter all. At least so it seems.

The tour­na­ment, de­spite re­ceiv­ing the go-ahead by the re­turn-to-sport or­der by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and his col­league Sham­fa Cud­joe, the Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment on Mon­day, did not re­ceive en­dorse­ment from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed on Thurs­day that on­ly the Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 Na­tion­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment which will be put on by busi­ness­man De­nis Lat­iff, was giv­en the go-ahead to have a com­pe­ti­tion to date. How­ev­er, this can change in the com­ing days or weeks.

The Tiger Tanks tour­ney is sched­uled to kick off on March 3 and will fea­ture 10 teams from Trinidad and an­oth­er five from the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go over an eight-week pe­ri­od.

It is un­der­stood the Tiger Tanks un­der-20 com­pe­ti­tion re­ceived the green light in June last year, af­ter the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee of the TTFA which is led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, sent an of­fi­cial re­quest to the sports' gov­ern­ing body - the Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FI­FA) and re­ceived it.

How­ev­er, at­tempts yes­ter­day to con­tact both Hadad and Amiel Mo­hammed, the act­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the T&TFA for a com­ment on the ap­proval via What­sapp, proved fu­tile as both did not re­spond to the ques­tion: 'which tour­na­ments have been sanc­tioned or which tour­na­ments will re­ceive sanc­tion for the re­open­ing of foot­ball.'

Both Richard Fer­gu­son, the La Hor­quet­ta own­er and his man­ag­er Kieron Ed­wards ad­mit­ted last year that ap­proval was grant­ed for the tour­na­ment in 2020, but Hadad al­leged­ly in­di­cat­ed dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view last year, that he was no longer will­ing to sanc­tion the As­cen­sion tour­na­ment.

Col­in Wharfe, Chair­man, Com­pe­ti­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 Men's Foot­ball Tour­na­ment said the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee will con­firm in writ­ing to all de­sirous of stag­ing com­pe­ti­tions soon.

Ac­cord­ing to Wharfe: "Things are flu­id at the mo­ment, the pri­ma­ry thing is that now that the reg­u­la­tions are in place, the op­er­a­tional and im­ple­men­ta­tion­al re­al­i­ty of those need to be put in place and ap­pli­ca­tions need to be sub­mit­ted.

It's a whole bunch of op­er­a­tions that need to be ex­e­cut­ed up­on and ei­ther some­where be­tween the start and the end of that process.

It is my un­der­stand­ing that the NC will pro­vide writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion of their ap­proval to en­gage in the qual­i­fy­ing sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

So there are a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als who have ei­ther al­ready start­ed or­gan­is­ing com­pe­ti­tions, and there are peo­ple who are al­so in­ter­est­ing in start­ing com­pe­ti­tions What they will have to do is go through the pro­to­cols to get ap­proval from the NC, es­pe­cial­ly if you want it to be held un­der the aus­pices of the TTFA."

Quizzed fur­ther on whether the Tiger Tanks tour­ney will be held un­der the aus­pices of the TTFA, Wharfe said: "Un­til we get con­fir­ma­tion that it is go­ing to be held, and we do not have con­fir­ma­tion from the NC to pro­ceed to hold com­pet­i­tive match­es. Be­cause as I said, the process to do so is pred­i­cat­ed on the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the health­care re­turn-to-play pro­to­cols pro­mul­gat­ed by the min­is­ter and they need to know what those are in sub­stance and op­er­a­tional­ly."

Wharfe not­ed al­so that he will not be able to of­fer an an­swer if the tour­na­ment will not be held un­der the aus­pices of the TTFA.