Guaya Unit­ed FC was giv­en by 1 pm yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to pro­vide de­tails and in­for­ma­tion about the trans­fer and ap­proval of strik­er Der­ron John, who has been the sub­ject of an on­go­ing bat­tle be­tween the south­east team and Harlem Strik­ers for the over­all sixth po­si­tion in Tier 2 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League.

The teams were locked on the same points and goal dif­fer­ence af­ter the fi­nal day of ac­tion in round one of the com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day, but Guaya got the edge for the sixth po­si­tion on a head-to-head com­par­i­son, which put them among the six qual­i­fiers for the Big Six Play Off that was sched­uled to be­gin yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Guaya was down to face Po­lice at the Bar­racks on Long Cir­cu­lar Road in St James, be­fore a protest by the Strik­ers forced the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to stop the con­test un­til an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is done.

On Tues­day night, Amiel Mo­hammed, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA, is­sued a re­lease in which he mis­tak­en­ly said the Guaya play­er was suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred in­stead of un­suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred.

“The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) and T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) would like to draw the at­ten­tion of Guaya Unit­ed to a mat­ter re­lat­ed to the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of play­er, Der­ron John.”

“In ac­cor­dance with the records avail­able to the TTFA and TTPFL from the FI­FA Con­nect, Mr John was suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred to Guaya Unit­ed from San Juan Jabloteh on 13 Au­gust 2023.”

“The ini­tial re­quest to fa­cil­i­tate this trans­fer is dat­ed 11 Au­gust 2023. A cor­re­spon­dence to TTPFL Tier 1 and Tier 2 clubs dat­ed 16 Au­gust 2023, in­di­cat­ed that a Do­mes­tic Reg­is­tra­tion Win­dow will be opened from 17 Ju­ly 2023 to 27 Ju­ly 2023. We would like to in­vite Guaya Unit­ed to kind­ly pro­vide any de­tails and fur­ther in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to Mr John by no lat­er than 1 pm (AST) on 13 Sep­tem­ber 2023.”

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day, Ha­gley urged the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion to check the new com­put­erised sys­tem for the reg­is­tra­tion of play­ers that was adopt­ed by FI­FA.

Ac­cord­ing to Ha­gley: “I am the per­son who han­dles all reg­is­tra­tion for Guaya Unit­ed, so let me re­spond. Let these peo­ple go back on their sys­tem and check that. We sent a trans­fer re­quest to his pre­vi­ous club re­quest­ing him, and they ap­proved him. Once the win­dow is closed, you can’t do or ap­prove any trans­fer re­quests. The sys­tem is de­signed to be fool-proof so that no one oth­er than the TTFA Ad­min can do the fi­nal ap­proval of a play­er af­ter his club ap­proves the trans­fer re­quest.”

Ha­gley, the Guaya man­ag­er of Guaya team said their re­quest for John was made be­tween mid-June to ear­ly Ju­ly which was well in­side the trans­fer win­dow.

It was lat­er ap­proved by Jabloteh and put in­to the sys­tem for TTFA ap­proval with­in the Ju­ly 27 dead­line, Ha­gley said yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the play­er was on­ly reg­is­tered on Au­gust 6 when the team played against FC Phoenix at the Guaya Recre­ation Ground in a match that end­ed 2-2. In that match, he could not play, as there was a grace pe­ri­od to sub­mit names for the game.

Gre­go­ry Mc­Sween, man­ag­er of Harlem Strik­ers, on Tues­day night said it was not their con­cern whether there was a blun­der in the reg­is­tra­tion or not, say­ing the fact there John was not reg­is­tered in time was all that mat­tered to them.