The North­ern and East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (NFA, EFA) have been thrown out of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) In­ter Zon­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment be­cause of their un­known vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus­es.

Both zones are yet to play a match af­ter just the first round of ac­tion when they were oust­ed.

The NFA, which is be­ing coached by for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Travis Mul­raine, was set to of­fi­cial­ly be­gin their cam­paign in the tour­na­ment with a match against the East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball Union (EC­FU) at the Lar­ry Gomes in Mal­abar, Ari­ma. They were sched­uled to play against the To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion last Sun­day in their open­ing game but that match was called off.

The EFA, on the oth­er hand, missed a match against the Cen­tral FA on March 6 but is sched­uled to be on a bye on Sun­day.

A let­ter from the TTFA that was sent to the as­so­ci­a­tions (EFA, NFA) on Wednes­day said: "In an ef­fort to fi­nalise and ad­e­quate­ly ex­e­cute the Zon­al Screen­ing Teams (ZST) plan, in the in­ter­est of time and avail­abil­i­ty of sta­dia, we have un­for­tu­nate­ly ex­clud­ed the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion as they have not sub­mit­ted any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their play­ers or vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus to date.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in ac­cor­dance with our com­mu­ni­ca­tion on 16 Jan­u­ary, 2022 and the tar­get­ed kick­off of oth­er club com­pe­ti­tions such as As­cen­sion Tour­na­ment, Tiger Tanks Men’s Un­der-20 tour­na­ment and NL­CL (Next Lev­el Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed) U-19 Com­mu­ni­ty Cup, the fix­tures of the ZSTs will be ad­just­ed. The ZST plan was for­mu­lat­ed to op­er­ate in the ab­sence of club com­pe­ti­tions and it was or­gan­ised with the un­der­stand­ing from all zones that once club com­pe­ti­tions re­sume, the play­ers would re­turn to their clubs."

Yes­ter­day, Mul­raine, fum­ing at the re­cent de­vel­op­ment, said: "The rules nev­er de­clared a dead­line for sub­mit­ting play­ers' vac­cine card and ID, so by right the nor­mal 48 hours should have been ad­hered to.

"Look at the last line, it specif­i­cal­ly says U-20 team. Whether spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion means se­nior play­ers can play with them, I don't know. It seems the man­ag­er was of the opin­ion that worst-case sce­nario, play­ers would have walked with their vac­cine card to be able to play on Sun­day, he mis­cal­cu­lat­ed."

Mul­raine not­ed that if they were told to sub­mit their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus by a cer­tain date then that would have been done.