FIFA, the world governing body for football, is set to be defended at all cost for its position to appoint a Normalisation Committee to take charge of local football and thereby ousting the legitimately elected team of president William Wallace, Clynt Taylor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Susan Joseph-Warrick when the case comes up on June 16. FIFA was given 28 days to file its defence which was served on it on May 19.
When contacted yesterday, Donna Denbow, the instructing Attorney on the three-member team of Dr Claude Denbow SC, Jerome Rajcoomar (junior counsel) and herself, told Guardian Media Sports on Wednesday that she believes they have a very strong case against the ousted T&T Football Association (TTFA) executives, which is being represented by the pair of Dr Emir Crowne and Matthew Gayle.
On Tuesday, the Law firm which is situated on Oxford Street in Port-of-Spain filed an Entry of Appearance to the registrar of the High Court at the Hall of Justice on Knox Street.
FIFA on March 17 appointed a normalisation committee to govern T&T football, saying the association faced a very high risk of insolvency and illiquidity. However, Wallace and his team have been attempting to defend itself, by first going through the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland, however, their attorneys two weeks ago submitted a complaint of unfair treatment and bias toward the FIFA before the matter started and decided to withdraw they challenge opting to take their fight to the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago.
Denbow (Donna) said her team is currently in the process of putting together its defence, saying they are going to be defending the FIFA stoutly.
"We feel we have a very strong position and we will be coming out punching, we are not buckling down."
Denbow promised they will also be addressing concerns on why and how the FIFA ended up in the High Court when its Statutes clearly state that Member Associations, such as the TTFA, could not take it to the local courts in their respective country. She also believes Gayle, one of two TTFA attorneys, should also explain how the parties ended up in the high court.
Meanwhile, Denbow also took offence to an online report which labelled her firm as the 'Rolls Royce' of the legal profession, describing the report as defamatory. In explaining how her firm was chosen to represent the sport's supreme body, she said FIFA reached out to them.
"We just received a call and asked if we could handle the matter. How these things work is that normally people refer you, they check on you, they google you to see if you are competent and if you are their person, but more often we send our CV up and they would ask a few people, and we came on board. I don't know how they heard of us, we don't know."
SOURCE: T&T Guardian