The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) stance to fight against the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern the sport of foot­ball here is be­ing sup­port­ed by some of its mem­bers.

On Mon­day, the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion which is led by William Wal­lace was bom­bard­ed by let­ters of sup­port from the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), of which Wal­lace was once the pres­i­dent, the T&T Su­per League, the T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TFRA) and the T&T Amer­i­can Youth Soc­cer Or­ga­ni­za­tion (TTAYSO).

How­ev­er, some mem­bers of the Su­per League camp, which is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by TTFA board mem­ber Kei­th Look Loy, said they are not in sup­port of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion stance to go against, the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport- FI­FA which is­sued a let­ter last Tues­day (March 17) in­di­cat­ing that the elect­ed of­fi­cers have been re­moved from of­fice and it will send a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern T&T foot­ball which has been strug­gling with mount­ing debt and it ap­pears there's no so­lu­tion of solv­ing it.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive which was elect­ed in­to of­fice on No­vem­ber 24, 2019, has hired at­tor­neys Matthew G W Gayle and Dr Emir Crowne to chal­lenged the de­ci­sion and file a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col in the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land.

This new de­vel­op­ment has led to mixed views from dif­fer­ent quar­ters of the pub­lic, in­clud­ing the mem­bers of the Su­per League, who on Mon­day made it clear of where the League's sup­port lies.

How­ev­er, Randy Ha­gley, the Guaya Unit­ed founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and Derek Ed­wards, the Pe­tit Val­ley Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed man­ag­er, both said they found out about the let­ter af­ter it was writ­ten and sent by Su­per League sec­re­tary Pe­ter Thomas.

Both foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors have since called for the let­ter high­light­ing the names of the teams that sup­port the TTFA to be pub­lished for all to see, not­ing that there were lots of Su­per League clubs that do not sup­port the TTFA stance.

Ed­wards, who for years has been a crit­ic of the lead­er­ship style of Look Loy, the cur­rent Chair­man of the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee and the TTSL rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Board of Di­rec­tors of the TTFA, told Guardian Me­dia Sports that the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee is the on­ly way to get T&T foot­ball back on track, say­ing the prob­lem of the high debt has plagued the sport for many years and the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee is the on­ly way to solve the prob­lem.

He al­so called for the let­ter of sup­port to be pulled back and let clubs sign a pe­ti­tion to show those who sup­port the TTFA and those that don't. The pair lack of sup­port fol­lows that of the T&T Pro League let­ter on Thurs­day which made it clear and ad­vised its Board mem­ber Brent San­cho, that the clubs are in sup­port of FI­FA's nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Mean­while, a let­ter sent by the NFA and signed by pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Har­ford on Mon­day said: “It is cu­ri­ous that af­ter three and a half months of sub­stan­tive tenure, FI­FA would take such a de­ci­sion, when for the two years be­fore our elec­tions, the ma­jor­i­ty of stake­hold­ers were clam­our­ing for their in­ter­ven­tion to no avail. It is even more galling that the elec­tions of No­vem­ber 24, in­clud­ed 100 per cent of the del­e­gates and wit­nessed by FI­FA of­fi­cials and deemed to be free and fair. We re­main stead­fast in our be­lief that this is a breach of jus­tice and we sin­cere­ly hope an un­dog­mat­ic way is found to solve this prob­lem. We look to you pre­vail­ing in this mat­ter.”

An­oth­er let­ter of sup­port came from the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) which reads: The SS­FL wish to com­mu­ni­cate their sup­port for the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed of­fi­cers of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion; who FI­FA has stat­ed their in­ten­tion to uni­lat­er­al­ly re­move from of­fice. The SS­FL con­demns the de­ci­sion, which it views as pre­ma­ture and ar­bi­trary, giv­en the fact that the said of­fi­cers have been in of­fice mere­ly four months. Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League sup­ports and en­cour­ages the TTFA to ex­plore every avail­able av­enue to have the FI­FA de­ci­sion re­scind­ed.”

Let­ters from the TTAYSO and The T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.