Board to decide North East future

In­ter­im Chair­man of the League Richard Fakoory said his mem­bers are de­sirous of find­ing a so­lu­tion to en­sure the east­ern­ers are ac­tive­ly in­volved in the league once again, but the si­lence from its Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Michael Awai has been deaf­en­ing.

The Stars' name was of­fi­cial­ly tak­en off the fix­ture of match­es for its fail­ure to ho­n­our its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to the League, Fakoory said. The T&T Pro League boss told Guardian Me­dia Sports the club, which is owned by busi­ness Ryan Nunes has failed to pay a $130, 000 reg­is­tra­tion fee which was set to help with the over­all run­ning of the tour­na­ment.

This fee, as well as the pay­ment of oth­er clubs, are be­ing used to off­set ma­jor ex­pens­es such as costs of ref­er­ees, match com­mis­sion­ers and league ad­min­is­tra­tion. Fakoory said the club has al­so failed to com­plete its reg­is­tra­tion and has not abid­ed by the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the League, by pro­vid­ing teamsheets that ex­ceed the num­ber of play­ers on it, for match­es.

For ex­am­ple, at one time the Stars' team list had 11 starters and as many sub­sti­tutes, and in oth­er cas­es it in­clud­ing un­reg­is­tered play­ers on it.

"It seems as though the team was just do­ing what it wants," Fakoory said. Ac­cord­ing to the Ter­minix St Ann's Rangers chief, the sad thing is that the club has not been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with us. "They do not at­tend meet­ings and do not re­spond to calls."

Con­tact­ed Awai said he had no com­ment and di­rect­ed all con­cerns to Fakoory, the pro league chair­man.

On­ly this week the League made a des­per­ate at­tempt to reach out to the Stars by re­quest­ing its at­ten­dance at a meet­ing of the Board on Di­vali day. How­ev­er, this meet­ing had to be can­celled as no one from North East re­spond­ed to the in­vi­ta­tion.

As a share­hold­er, the Stars can­not be thrown out of the League, but it ap­pears there will be no foot­ball for the hun­dreds of young play­ers the club caters for un­til an of­fi­cial re­quest for a meet­ing is made with the Board. "We want this sit­u­a­tion to be re­solved but we will not be hound­ing them down to do so," Fakoory said.

It is un­der­stood the Stars have been dis­grun­tled over monies owed to them from its tri­umph in the League last year.