T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFRA) role with­in the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) op­er­a­tions is one of the con­cerns that FI­FA had af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Con­ca­caf be­fore de­cid­ing to send a Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed that in­for­ma­tion had reached Con­ca­caf that the TTFA had ap­point­ed Joseph Tay­lor and Boni Bish­op to head the TTFA Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee and Ref­er­ee De­part­ment re­spec­tive­ly against its ad­vice not to do so at a meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 4, 2019, be­cause of a con­flict of in­ter­est of per­sons who be­long to the TTR­FA, an or­gan­i­sa­tion which func­tions as a Union for ref­er­ees as stat­ed in the meet­ing.

Al­so, it was point­ed out that Tay­lor is the pres­i­dent of the TTR­FA and Bish­op is the chair­per­son of the ap­point­ments com­mit­tee and is al­so the sit­ting gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTR­FA.

Guardian Me­dia Sports has seen doc­u­ments from the Oc­to­ber 4 meet­ing which took place at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va with all lo­cal ref­er­ee­ing stake­hold­ers to­geth­er with Dave Meik­le, the Con­ca­caf Ref­er­ee Man­ag­er for the Caribbean re­gion and Javier San­tos, the Ref­er­ee De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer for Con­ca­caf, present.

TTFA was ad­vised in Oc­to­ber to have the ap­pro­pri­ate ref­er­ee com­mit­tee es­tab­lished ac­cord­ing to the FI­FA reg­u­la­tions and to im­me­di­ate­ly re­vised the con­sti­tu­tion to re­flect best prac­tices as di­rect­ed by FI­FA statutes and to guard against dual roles for those serv­ing the TTFA ref­er­ees com­mit­tee and the Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion.

How­ev­er, it ap­pears that de­spite Con­ca­caf's ad­vise TTFA led by William Wal­lace, who took up of­fice on No­vem­ber 24, 2019, act­ed against FI­FA's ad­vise by mak­ing the ap­point­ments in Jan­u­ary and again in March.

Among those who at­tend­ed the meet­ing were

Ca­ma­ra David (the then gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA), Wayne Cae­sar (head of the TTFA Ref­er­ee­ing De­part­ment), Joseph Tay­lor (chair­man of the TTFA Ref­er­ees’ Com­mit­tee/pres­i­dent of TTFRA/MA Fit­ness In­struc­tor),

Os­mond Down­er (a mem­ber of TTFA Ref­er­ees’ Com­mit­tee /TTFRA vice pres­i­dent), Bish­op (chair­man of the TTFA Ref­er­ees’ Com­mit­tee Ap­point­ment Com­mit­tee/TTFRA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary), Meik­le (Con­ca­caf Ref­er­ee Man­ag­er - Caribbean Re­gion), San­tos (RDO FI­FA/Con­ca­caf), Lyn­da Bram­ble-Thomp­son, Jag­ger­nath Goolcha­ran, Michael Ra­goonath, Nigel Roberts and David Ramkelawan.

The meet­ing which was chaired by David be­came nec­es­sary af­ter two pre­vi­ous meet­ings by Ja­maican Pe­ter Pren­der­gast, a Con­ca­caf De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer and for­mer two-time World Cup ref­er­ee failed to get par­ties to com­ply in 2016-2017 de­spite FI­FA hav­ing amend­ed its statutes in 2011.

The meet­ing was told that the roles and func­tion of in­di­vid­u­als serv­ing both the TTR­FA and the TTFA con­flict­ed with FI­FA statutes for sev­er­al years and 11 top­ics of con­cerns were raised and dis­cussed.

The num­ber of votes the TTR­FA has, was al­so a con­cern to­geth­er with its po­si­tion on board of di­rec­tors, while the Sec­ondary Schools League (SS­FL) which rep­re­sents per­haps the largest sin­gle stake­hold­er lo­cal­ly on­ly had one vote and no seat at the board lev­el.

Among the top­ics dis­cussed were:

- There are a mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the FI­FA Reg­u­la­tions on the or­gan­i­sa­tion of ref­er­ee­ing in the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion;

- The ref­er­ee­ing de­part­ment and the Ref­er­ee Com­mit­tee are deeply di­vid­ed over the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties;

- The Ref­er­ee As­so­ci­a­tion is rep­re­sent­ed at the board lev­el of the TTFA and has two votes;

- TTFA ref­er­ees com­mit­tee is chaired by Tay­lor, who is pres­i­dent of the TTFRA. Tay­lor is al­so the MA Fit­ness In­struc­tor;

- Chair­per­son of the ap­point­ments com­mit­tee is Bish­op, who is al­so the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of TTFRA.

- Os­mond Down­er is a mem­ber of the TTFA ref­er­ees com­mit­tee but he is al­so a First vice pres­i­dent of the Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFRA). Lee Davis is al­so a mem­ber of the Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee and Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion

Head of TTFA Ref­er­ee­ing De­part­ment, Wayne Cae­sar as­serts that this arrange­ment means his de­part­ment has no say in the ap­point­ment of match of­fi­cials nor is his de­part­ment aware of ap­point­ments. The MA tech­ni­cal in­struc­tors are al­so not copied on game as­sign­ments

In­struc­tors Bram­ble-Thomp­son, Goolcha­ran and Ra­goonath were al­so high­ly crit­i­cal of this arrange­ment say­ing the Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion dom­i­nance of the Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee amounts to third par­ty con­trol, al­so cit­ing this is in di­rect con­flict of the FI­FA Statutes

They al­so in­formed the meet­ing that Messers Tay­lor and Down­er are us­ing their in­flu­ence to co­erce ref­er­ees in­to reg­is­ter­ing with the Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion or face vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

It was stat­ed: "There is dis­trust among the par­ties as it is gen­er­al­ly felt that the ref­er­ee as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers use the um­brel­la of the ref­er­ee com­mit­tee to ad­vance their agen­da.

How­ev­er, "Tay­lor, Down­er and Bish­op de­nied the al­le­ga­tions dur­ing the meet­ing say­ing in­stead there is a move to break up the Ref­er­ee As­so­ci­a­tion which is there to rep­re­sent the in­ter­est of the ref­er­ees."

It was al­so high­light­ed that sim­i­lar meet­ings for clar­i­fi­ca­tion were held in the past with the Ref­er­ee­ing De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer, Pe­ter Pren­der­gast. How­ev­er, the par­ties in­volved have sim­ply re­fused to com­ply.

Ac­cord­ing to Meik­le, this ev­i­dent di­ver­gence of ref­er­ee­ing in­ter­est must be re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time as this plat­form which has been al­lowed to ex­ist will con­tin­ue to do more harm than good. It ap­pears to be de­void of trans­paren­cy and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty. The present struc­ture in T&T Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion is not in keep­ing with the FI­FA Stat­ues re­lat­ing to the or­gan­is­ing of ref­er­ee­ing.

He point­ed out to the TTFA ar­ti­cles: 3.2 and 4.1 as its guide.

Ar­ti­cle 3.2 reads: “Un­der no cir­cum­stances may it fall un­der the su­per­vi­sion or con­trol of oth­er bod­ies, such as the leagues, unions or gov­ern­ment (in­clud­ing par­lia­ments and any oth­er state au­thor­i­ties)”.

Ar­ti­cle 4.1 states: "Its mem­bers may not be af­fil­i­at­ed to any clubs, leagues or any oth­er foot­ball or­ga­ni­za­tion” The mem­bers of the Ref­er­ee Com­mit­tee are bonafide mem­bers of the Ref­er­ees as­so­ci­a­tion (TTFRA). It is caus­ing con­cerns re­lat­ed to the ap­point­ment of the ref­er­ees".

Meik­le, then sug­gest­ed a dead­line of De­cem­ber 31, 2019, for the TTFA to reg­u­larise the sit­u­a­tion and he list­ed sev­en rec­om­men­da­tions items in par­tic­u­lar item six which reads: "A spe­cif­ic time­line should be giv­en to have the sit­u­a­tion rec­ti­fied and sanc­tions to be ap­plied for non-com­pli­ance.

FI­FA/Con­ca­caf rec­om­men­da­tions:

1 To have an ap­pro­pri­ate ref­er­ees com­mit­tee es­tab­lished as per FI­FA Reg­u­la­tions;

2 The TTFA needs to re­vise its con­sti­tu­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly re­flect best prac­tices as di­rect­ed by FI­FA statutes;

3 The con­sti­tu­tion of the TTFA should be amend­ed to guard against dual roles, 1.e serv­ing the ref­er­ee com­mit­tee and the ref­er­ee as­so­ci­a­tion at the same time;

4 In gen­er­al, we rec­om­mend that the TTFA us­es its au­thor­i­ty to avoid any ap­pear­ance of

con­flict of in­ter­est to min­imise the risk to the FA’s rep­u­ta­tion con­cern­ing in­tegri­ty;

5 TTFA should es­tab­lish a code of con­duct which out­lines sit­u­a­tions, for ex­am­ple, con­flict of in­ter­est, which its of­fi­cials should avoid and ac­tions to be tak­en if prob­lem­at­ic sit­u­a­tions arise;

6 A spe­cif­ic time­line should be giv­en to have the sit­u­a­tion rec­ti­fied and sanc­tions to be ap­plied for non-com­pli­ance;

7 Sug­gest­ed dead­line to reg­u­larise the sit­u­a­tion: De­cem­ber 31st, 2019.

When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter Ramesh Ramd­han, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA and a for­mer head of the TTFA Ref­er­ees De­part­ment told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he's aware of the mat­ter and the let­ter from FI­FA and the rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined.

He said: "Yes, I'm aware of it. There was a se­quence of let­ters be­ing ex­changed pri­or to me be­com­ing sec­re­tary, writ­ten by Con­ca­caf to the TTFA. With in a week of com­ing in­to of­fice I re­cieved a let­ter from Con­ca­caf giv­ing a dead­line of De­cem­ber 31, 2019 to re­move the con­flict of in­ter­est that they saw re­sid­ing in the ref­er­eer­ing de­part­ment. I could not ad­dress it then so I asked for an ex­ten­sion to the 14 Jan­u­ary. It was then ad­dressed sub­quent­ly at a Board meet­ing when they were elect­ing the chair­man of the ref­er­ees com­mit­tee and the same con­flict of in­ter­est thing came up among the Board. Mr Tay­lor was made to re­sign as the pres­i­dent of the TTR­FA to pick up the ap­point­ment as chair­man of the Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee and he did and he was ap­point­ed."

How­ev­er, on March 9, the TTFA ap­point­ed Bish­op, who is the present gen­er­al sec­re­tary of TTFRA to re­place Cae­sar as Head of the Ref­er­ees De­part­ment (HORD) fol­low­ing in­ter­views con­duct­ed on Feb­ru­ary 26 and 27.

The Guardian Me­dia Sports al­so saw doc­u­ments which placed Bish­op with the sec­ond over­all best score of the three fi­nal­ists, while for­mer World Cup ref­er­ee Merere Louis Gon­za­les fin­ished first over­all from the in­ter­view pan­el of six per­sons which com­prised three TTFA Board mem­bers (Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Tay­lor and Su­san Joseph-War­rick) and which high­lights the con­cern FI­FA ex­pressed at the meet­ing of Oc­to­ber 4 about a con­flict of in­ter­est.

The oth­ers who were in­ter­viewed for the top ref­er­ee's po­si­tion were Tren­ton Toney, Bram­ble-Thomp­son, Jag­ger­nauth Goolcha­ran and the in­cum­bent Cae­sar.

On Mon­day, the em­bat­tled Wal­lace-led foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion got five let­ters of sup­port from foot­ball af­fil­i­ates to­wards its chal­lenge of FI­FA's de­ci­sion to re­move the du­ly elect­ed of­fi­cers and re­place it with a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to gov­ern the sport of foot­ball here for up to two years.

The TTR­FA let­ter is signed by Joseph Tay­lor as pres­i­dent de­spite claims that he has re­signed from the T&TFRA. Bish­op is al­so the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFRA.