TTFA - Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Bowl­ing off last night in Aus­tralia is the ICC Women's T20 World Cup with 10 coun­tries com­pet­ing. We play our first game tonight against Thai­land which should be a win­ning start. How­ev­er, the host coun­try is the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and a strong favourite to win the tour­na­ment for the fifth time.

Lo­cal­ly, what a sham­bol­ic dis­play by the Red Force against the Bar­ba­dos Pride. 77 all-out? Some­thing has to be wrong. I like the look of young Ba­jan fast bowler Keon Hard­ing, but 77? Pa­thet­ic. I see the se­lec­tors have act­ed swift­ly with 5 changes. I sup­pose a bit of dis­as­ter re­lief is al­ways wel­comed.

But what caught my eye last Sun­day morn­ing was a let­ter to Guardian News­pa­per's Ed­i­tor by Michael Awai - Foot­ball Ad­min­is­tra­tor. Hon­est­ly, with the dai­ly and seem­ing­ly per­pet­u­al doom and gloom on crime one reads, it brought me hu­mour. Mr Awai, are you se­ri­ous? The first thing you need­ed to es­tab­lish in your let­ter is that you were, and judg­ing from your let­ter, still are a sup­port­er of for­mer TTFA Pres­i­dent David John-Williams and his slate which in­clud­ed Sel­by Browne. This would have giv­en the read­ers a clear un­der­stand­ing with con­text to your opin­ions.

In­deed, one thing you are cor­rect - it is al­most 90 days since the new TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der William Wal­lace took charge; and yes at a meet­ing they laid out their cam­paign and men­tioned they would be go­ing to spon­sors which in­clud­ed Nike. Oth­er than Nike, you haven't men­tioned any oth­er spon­sors or cam­paign promis­es that have “dis­ap­pear(ed) in­to thin air”. Al­low me to ex­plain some­thing, Mr Awai. Com­pa­nies fi­nalise bud­gets by Oc­to­ber for the up­com­ing year so un­less Wal­lace and his team had ac­tu­al­ly gone to com­pa­nies be­fore the elec­tion, and fi­nalised deals with them with the loom­ing un­cer­tain­ty of suc­cess, they would still have had to start the process from scratch af­ter the elec­tion.

Christ­mas was al­so on the hori­zon but first Wal­lace may have want­ed to have a look at TTFA's books, bud­gets, etc. This process takes time es­pe­cial­ly with the mess I ex­pect they would have found.

Have you heard about the 'Home of Foot­ball' and what this new TTFA has dis­cov­ered? You say, “it made no sense to shut it down” and the re­main­ing prob­lems that ex­ist­ed could have been sort­ed out but you don't know the sever­i­ty of the prob­lems, so how could you com­ment?

I al­so note your sug­ges­tion to utilise the fa­cil­i­ty for pre and post car­ni­val fetes but you must sure­ly be re­fer­ring to 2021 be­cause 95% of fete pro­mot­ers have al­ready booked their venues for the 2020 car­ni­val sea­son long be­fore De­cem­ber 2019.

I al­so note that you have ad­vised Wal­lace to talk to John-Williams on as­sist­ing with sourc­ing friend­lies. I am sure as Pres­i­dent, Wal­lace, with the as­sis­tance of Coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, can in­tro­duce them­selves to the world and get some friend­lies. Per­haps he can go back to An­guil­la? It would be a great start for Fen­wick and the team.

In ad­di­tion to John-Williams, you al­so want Wal­lace to sit with Sel­by Browne and de­vel­op a mar­ket­ing plan to ben­e­fit the TV and the me­dia. Mr. Awai, wasn't Browne a part of the past regime? Where was their mar­ket­ing plan? How much mon­ey was brought in from tele­vi­sion and ra­dio? Like John-Williams, Browne was re­ject­ed by the clubs; wouldn't they feel as if this new ad­min­is­tra­tion has let them down by re­vert­ing to the old ad­min­is­tra­tion?

I un­der­stand they are meet­ing with the T&T Pro and Su­per League clubs so that we can have a cadre of lo­cal play­ers that would be good enough as fu­ture na­tion­al play­ers. I ex­pect this TTFA will be find­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways to bring our foot­ball back to an ac­cept­able lev­el. They have al­ready ap­point­ed coach­es to most of our na­tion­al teams. How are they fund­ing it? I ex­pect in due course we will get this in­for­ma­tion as there has been a well-pub­li­cised plea in the pub­lic do­main for trans­paren­cy with­in the TTFA, so I hope this new ad­min­is­tra­tion will hear this cry.

Peo­ple are not hurt­ing now as a re­sult of the state of foot­ball. They have been hurt­ing for the last four years. How­ev­er, I love your idea to ask every T&T na­tion­al home and abroad for $100 to­wards a fund to as­sist the TTFA. If you launch the fund, I will join you and do­nate my $100 and we can be the cus­to­di­ans of the fund and ask Bish­op Claude Berkley and Arch­bish­op Charles Gor­don to be part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion. Good idea?

It is a pity that ex-tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendall Walkes has tak­en out a gar­nishee or­der on the TTFA. They ap­peared to be try­ing to agree with him (and many oth­ers) and seemed to be deal­ing in good faith but need­ed more time. Per­haps Walkes couldn't wait any longer. TTFA is quick­ly learn­ing that some­times in life you pay for the sins of oth­ers.

All T&T asks and de­serves from William Wal­lace and the TTFA is com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­tegri­ty, hon­esty and trans­paren­cy.

To the foot­ball-lov­ing pub­lic, al­most 90 days have gone for the new TTFA. How do you feel?

Ed­i­tor's note

The views ex­pressed in this ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.