'Wally' & TTFA's road to recovery

My open­ing re­marks have to do with William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA. You see, my dear read­ers, “Wal­ly” as he is fond­ly called, has been down this road be­fore. Wal­ly and I first crossed paths in 2003 when Al­loy Lequay had demit­ted the of­fice of the T&T Crick­et Board and crick­et was head­ing down a slip­pery slope. A group of us came to­geth­er to try and ar­rest the down­ward spi­ral of crick­et and formed a group called the Friends of Crick­et. It was nev­er go­ing to be an easy task try­ing to wres­tle pow­er from those who were in con­trol of the des­tiny of T&T's crick­et. Peo­ple back then were fed up and quick­ly want­ed to see the back of Al­loy's per­son­nel.

How­ev­er, he had his plan for crick­et as no one dared to op­pose him or his ideas year af­ter year. Some may say that Al­loy was to crick­et what Jack Warn­er was to foot­ball, or was it the oth­er way around? Please, don't mis­un­der­stand me. Both men have made tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tions to their re­spec­tive sports and have left a lega­cy that will be hard to fol­low. But, there are times when you must let go of the reins and al­low oth­er peo­ple to ride the horse-no one wants to be ac­cused of act­ing like a dic­ta­tor, or so it should be.

With the for­ma­tion of the Friends of Crick­et, those in pow­er start­ed to feel un­com­fort­able. We had a plan; we had spon­sors; we spoke about trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and we pushed hard for struc­tur­al re­or­gan­i­sa­tion to de­vel­op zones, youths, um­pires, clubs, coach­es etc. More and more peo­ple bought in­to the idea, ex­cept those in pow­er so we knew (1) we were in for a fight and (2) we had to win over some of the vot­ers who were very much in the cor­ner of the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Thank­ful­ly, some of those vot­ers switched al­le­giance and vot­ed for the Friends of Crick­et and that was how we con­trolled the best pe­ri­od of re­sults in the his­to­ry of T&T's crick­et.

I find it quite amus­ing to­day when I see chal­lenges to the pow­ers that con­trol crick­et be­cause the on­ly way to un­seat the in­cum­bents, is by form­ing a group that has votes and are part of the set­up. The Friends of Crick­et, for all the good work they did, were re­moved from of­fice by an­oth­er group called the Move­ment for Change where per­sons on the ex­ec­u­tive re­mark­ably vot­ed against those in pow­er.

So when I wit­nessed Wal­ly be­ing part of this group called Unit­ed TTFA, I knew he was up for it and more im­por­tant­ly, he is a war­rior ca­pa­ble of fight­ing the tough­est of bat­tles. With the lessons he learnt back then, it was easy for him to be part of this Unit­ed TTFA. But the chal­lenge was to en­sure he had the right peo­ple at his side. There was on­ly one man to lead this group. Wal­ly has an im­pec­ca­ble record; his in­tegri­ty is sec­ond to none and I have nev­er heard any­one, any­where ac­cuse him of any un­der­hand deal­ings. He loves sports and gives his life to the de­vel­op­ment of young­sters as ev­i­denced by the fact that he was the Pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League and is still the Pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League - the most sup­port­ed and well-or­gan­ised league in T&T. He is a very hum­ble, yet strong hu­man be­ing and don't be fooled by the se­ri­ous na­ture of his de­meanour; he en­joys a good laugh and good com­pa­ny.

Just as it was many years ago with crick­et, the task here is, by all re­ports, even worse. How can peo­ple in po­si­tions of pow­er sit around and watch the beau­ti­ful game in our coun­try go to ru­ins? Al­low me to make it abun­dant­ly clear. I have noth­ing and will nev­er have any­thing per­son­al against any of our lead­ers in the var­i­ous na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions. I have been crit­i­cal of the lead­er­ship of crick­et, bad­minton, foot­ball, ath­let­ics and vol­ley­ball, to name a few, be­cause all I have asked for is ac­count­abil­i­ty and a prop­er gov­er­nance struc­ture and this should be de­mand­ed by every mem­ber of any board work­ing for the good of this coun­try.

Poor Wal­ly. He will spend sleep­less nights over the next few months as there is so much to do. He first has to look at the cur­rent debt of the TTFA. If he can find it and meet with all those owed by the TTFA and de­cide how these debts will be paid off, not by to­mor­row, but in some cas­es years. What about ex­pens­es un­til the end of the year? Let us hope there will be some rev­enue com­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion. Then, of course, there is a mul­ti­tude of on­go­ing le­gal mat­ters. What a com­plete dis­as­ter to in­her­it. The list is much longer as I could go on and on.

One thing is for sure - Wal­ly is his own man but re­alis­es he can't do it alone. He will not be blind­ed by those who think they can pull the wool over his eyes as he is a sound judge of char­ac­ter. He's been there and done that.

The road ahead for our beau­ti­ful game is go­ing to be dan­ger­ous­ly rocky but I am ask­ing the pub­lic, in­clud­ing the cor­po­rate sec­tor, to come for­ward and give Wal­ly and his Unit­ed TTFA their full co­op­er­a­tion in bring­ing some sta­bil­i­ty and re­spectabil­i­ty back to T&T's foot­ball. It can be done but it can­not be a one-man show and if we put all our re­sources to­geth­er, the sky will be the lim­it. Be­lieve me when I say that I have full con­fi­dence in Wal­ly and his team bring­ing T&T's foot­ball back on course. Good luck, Wal­ly!

Ed­i­tor's note: The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.