Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA) Lennox Sir­juesingh is ve­he­ment­ly against the sale of the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va and de­scribed it as short-sight­ed­ness.

Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, has said on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions that the sale of the Home of Foot­ball is an op­tion to clear a debt, which has crip­pled T&T foot­ball for the past years.

The debt now stands at $98.5 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Sir­juesingh in a re­lease: "The sug­ges­tion and avail­abil­i­ty for sale of the HOF as a means of liq­ui­dat­ing the TTFA re­port­ed $ 98.5 mil­lion debt is cer­tain­ly short-sight­ed and of se­ri­ous con­cern to me. Ef­forts must be made to save the HOF for its orig­i­nal pur­pose.

"It is to be seen as an achieve­ment and lega­cy, some­thing of pos­si­bly first, cer­tain­ly for a small coun­try. "

The vet­er­an ad­min­is­tra­tor knows the sport of foot­ball and its ad­min­is­tra­tion very well, hav­ing served in foot­ball since 1964 as an ad­min­is­tra­tor. Lat­er in 1967, Sir­juesingh be­came a T&T ref­er­ee and from 1973-1978 served as the sec­re­tary of the Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion.

Sir­juesingh lat­er be­came a FI­FA ref­er­ee in 1977 be­fore serv­ing as as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion un­der then gen­er­al sec­re­tary Richard Gro­den. Hav­ing held the po­si­tion of sec­re­tary of the CFA from 2005- 2010, Sir­juesingh is now back at the CFA as gen­er­al sec­re­tary.

He be­lieves con­sul­ta­tion can be the so­lu­tion to liq­ui­dat­ing the TTFA debt.

"The pur­port­ed sale, if it were to be­come re­al­i­ty, will sat­is­fy an im­me­di­ate need no doubt. Look­ing down the road and the well-es­tab­lished vi­a­bil­i­ty of re­al es­tate, one is led to think se­ri­ous think­ing is need­ed here.

"An eval­u­a­tion of the prospec­tive price of that prop­er­ty in a few years, I am cer­tain, will see sell­ing it off to­day as hav­ing been bad busi­ness which we will live to re­gret when in a few years the area shall be con­vert­ed to its po­ten­tial via its strate­gic po­si­tion."

He not­ed fur­ther: "The quite ob­vi­ous ques­tion is - What does the TTFA do in the short or im­me­di­ate term?" Brain­storm­ing is like­ly to pro­duce a so­lu­tion. I do have a sug­ges­tion and I'm will­ing to dis­cuss it with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. Like­wise, oth­ers will come up with ideas that are at­tain­able and ad­vis­able.

"For now, please T&T let us see HOF as an achieve­ment to be ap­pre­ci­at­ed, pre­served, mon­i­tored, im­proved and be­come a lega­cy."