OPPOSITION Member of Parliament, Colm Imbert, has urged Minister of Sport Anil Roberts to end his bickering with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) and its Authorisation Committee head Anthony Harford as it is not healthy for football.
Speaking in Parliament on Friday evening, Imbert accused Roberts of taking everything personal and behaving in an antagonistic manner towards the various local sporting organisations including the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) and National Association of Athletics Administration (NAAA).
“It was fine when you were a radio talk show host. All that noisy boisterous behavior; all that quarrelling, shouting and fighting with people; that was fine when you were a radio talk show host but you are a minister now and you have to understand that this unseemly behaviour is having a detrimental effect on our young sportsmen and women,” he declared.
Imbert also accused the Minister of Sport of not funding the national football team’s participation in the recently concluded Caribbean Cup first round in St Kitts despite Roberts’ “bold promise to provide airfare and accommodation for the national football team”.
“One set of noise (but) what are the facts? The ministry did not provide the funding that the minister promised, the footballers found themselves stranded in St Kitts, they did not receive money for hotel expenses (yet) all this set of noise. It cannot be good for football where the minister takes everything so personal where he has to come into this Parliament making rash and reckless statements that proved to be totally without foundation,” he remarked.
Imbert also stressed that Roberts’ public feud with Harford with regards to the accounting of funds has been drawn out too long and should have been dealt with in private.
“This public dispute over football is not doing any good to the footballers of Trinidad and Tobago. Enough is enough because there is so much contradictory information in the system. The minister is saying All Sport Promotions did not provide accounts while All Sport said they did…It’s just going back and forth achieving nothing…This is something that should be settled behind closed doors,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Imbert also laid the blame on the Soca Warriors early exit from the 2014 World Cup campaign squarely on Minister of National Security Jack Warner and the Sports Ministry. He argued that funds were not made available to the TTFF for almost a year which resulted in the team playing just one practice match in ten months prior to their first World Cup qualifying match.
“You’re sending them into competition and for ten months you have the team inactive. You play one game against India just before the qualifiers and you expect them to win? Commonsense would tell you that a team that was inactive for almost a year is going to be at a severe disadvantage,” he declared.