Lawrence grilled by TTFA panel

For­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Os­mond Down­er has al­ready ar­gued that Wal­lace and his team can­not func­tion un­til a full board has been con­sti­tut­ed, as there is cur­rent­ly no quo­rum of nine mem­bers. This, he said, oc­curred be­cause on­ly two mem­ber bod­ies of­fered up their board mem­bers dur­ing Sun­day's AGM, bring­ing the to­tal of du­ly con­sti­tut­ed board mem­bers to just five.

And in the wake of this comes word that cur­rent T&T coach Den­nis Lawrence was in­ter­viewed by Wal­lace and a pan­el that in­clud­ed peo­ple who sup­port­ed the Unit­ed TTFA slate elect­ed dur­ing Sun­day's AGM and in­di­vid­u­als who were not board mem­bers.

"It's very clear to me that the Unit­ed TTFA is run­ning the TTFA," a source, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day.

The source said apart from Wal­lace and his new three-mem­ber team, Kei­th Look Loy, An­tho­ny Har­ford and Aza­ad Khan were al­so part of the meet­ing where Lawrence was grilled on his per­for­mance in re­cent months.

The source said apart from Lawrence, the group al­so met with se­nior team man­ag­er Richard Piper, head of the TTFA Elite Pro­gramme Gary St Rose and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple on Wednes­day.

In a press re­lease on Wednes­day evening, the TTFA con­firmed that "Wal­lace and his team of of­fi­cers, Vice Pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, main­tained a high tem­po ap­proach to their first days in of­fice with an­oth­er eight-hour meet­ing to­day at the FA’s head of­fice in Cou­va." How­ev­er, the re­lease did not men­tion the in­volve­ment of Look Loy, Har­ford and Khan in the ex­er­cise.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, how­ev­er, that Look Loy, Har­ford and Khan at­tend­ed the meet­ing as the TTFA tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor, mar­ket­ing ad­vi­sor and record­ing sec­re­tary re­spec­tive­ly.

When con­tact­ed on Thurs­day, Look Loy con­firmed the ap­point­ments of both Har­ford and him­self but not­ed they were pres­i­dents of the NFA and Su­per League re­spec­tive­ly.

Ef­forts to con­tact both Wal­lace and Har­ford were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, the source took is­sue with the in­volve­ment of in­di­vid­u­als who did not face the TTFA elec­tion process on Sun­day.

The source point­ed out that Khan had served in the ca­pac­i­ty of in­ter­im TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary af­ter David John-Williams was elect­ed pres­i­dent in No­vem­ber 2015 and served for about a year.

The source added, "I am very sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed with this ac­tion by the new pres­i­dent and elect­ed of­fi­cers, who told the pub­lic and the foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty that the for­mer pres­i­dent (John-Williams) was act­ing ul­tra virus to the con­sti­tu­tion, but less than a week af­ter be­ing elect­ed they are do­ing the same thing that they were very vo­cal about and frowned up­on. They are mak­ing de­ci­sions with­out a board be­ing con­sti­tut­ed and those de­ci­sions in­volved and are in­flu­enced by Look Loy and Har­ford, who are mem­bers of the Unit­ed TTFA team that was cam­paign­ing to re­move the last pres­i­dent. This could nev­er be good for the sport go­ing for­ward."

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view in Wednes­day's T&T Guardian, Down­er, one of the ar­chi­tects of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion, says there is cur­rent­ly no TTFA board and on­ly this body can make tru­ly bind­ing de­ci­sions ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cle 36 and 37 of the con­sti­tu­tion. This is be­cause on­ly mem­bers un­der­took the process to ap­point their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the board dur­ing Sun­day’s AGM, ac­cord­ing to item 12 and 16 of the con­sti­tut­ed agen­da.

Down­er made the com­ment as he sought to clar­i­fy what de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­ers the new­ly-elect­ed of­fi­cers of the TTFA un­der Wal­lace now pos­sess.

Down­er, a for­mer FI­FA and TTFA ref­er­ee in­struc­tor, was re­spond­ing to claims by Wal­lace that the TTFA met on Mon­day and his ex­ec­u­tive had tak­en sev­er­al de­ci­sions and again on Wednes­day with an ex­pand­ed group that in­clud­ed non-board mem­bers and made fur­ther de­ci­sions.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian