TTFA sacks Dennis Lawrence

His sack­ing was one of few key de­ci­sions made by the board af­ter its first of­fi­cial meet­ing since the William Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice on No­vem­ber 24.

Lawrence had been un­der fire fol­low­ing a string of poor per­for­mances by the So­ca War­riors dur­ing the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and the Na­tions League. How­ev­er, he re­fused to step down and sur­vived un­der the pre­vi­ous David John-Williams-led TTFA.

Apart from Lawrence's sack­ing, the board al­so agreed to ac­cept the res­ig­na­tion of Ca­ma­ra David as gen­er­al sec­re­tary and re­placed him with Ramesh Ramd­han, a for­mer World Cup ref­er­ee and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date back in 2015.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTFA said fol­low­ing a marathon ses­sion of nine hours on Sat­ur­day, the board, af­ter a ma­jor­i­ty vote, de­cid­ed to sack Lawrence, a de­ci­sion that was lat­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the coach via a phone call by Wal­lace. It was al­so agreed that Wal­lace will meet with Lawrence's rep­re­sen­ta­tives to com­plete the sep­a­ra­tion soon. They did not name a re­place­ment for Lawrence but said they would do so soon.

Mean­while, Ramd­han, a busi­ness­man who has pub­licly sup­port­ed the Wal­lace-led Unit­ed TTFA, was ex­pect­ed to get down to work al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

De­ci­sions made by the TTFA board on Sat­ur­day were:

1. The pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by for­mer Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ca­ma­ra David for a mu­tu­al ter­mi­na­tion of his ser­vices was ac­cept­ed. Ramesh Ramd­han was ap­point­ed as his re­place­ment, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

2. The ser­vices of Den­nis Lawrence as Se­nior Men’s Na­tion­al Team head coach were ter­mi­nat­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect fol­low­ing a ma­jor­i­ty de­ci­sion by the board. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion of the board, Pres­i­dent Wal­lace con­tact­ed Mr Lawrence via tele­phone to in­form him of the de­ci­sion and wished him well in his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life while al­so thank­ing him for his ser­vices to the Se­nior Men’s Team. The TTFA pres­i­dent and Lawrence’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive(s) will meet to dis­cuss the terms of sep­a­ra­tion. Lawrence’s re­place­ment will be an­nounced short­ly.

3. The Emer­gency Com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed for a four-year term, 2019 to 2023. Chair­per­sons and/or mem­bers were ap­point­ed to six (6) oth­er Com­mit­tees, in­clud­ing Club Li­cens­ing, Com­pe­ti­tions, Fi­nance, Le­gal, Play­er Sta­tus, Sports Med­i­cine.

4. The Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed un­der the Chair­man­ship of Kei­th Look Loy. This com­mit­tee will su­per­vise a new tech­ni­cal and man­age­ment struc­ture for TTFA na­tion­al teams and tech­ni­cal pro­grammes. (See at­tached). A North Amer­i­can scout­ing pro­gramme un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee was al­so ap­proved.

5. The Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee will re­view the struc­ture, per­son­nel and fi­nances of the Elite Youth Pro­gramme and make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Board in Jan­u­ary 2010.

6. Dis­cus­sions on the Tech­ni­cal Staffs for the Women’s Un­der 20 and Un­der 17 Teams con­tin­ued and de­ci­sions will be dis­closed in due course ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Women’s Cham­pi­onships in Feb­ru­ary and March 2020 re­spec­tive­ly.

7. TTFA will not sanc­tion the League of Cham­pi­ons cre­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion as it in­cludes a ma­jor­i­ty of clubs that are sus­pend­ed by the TTFA’s Gen­er­al Meet­ing and/or their league.

8. The T-League Com­mis­sion will be re­vis­it­ed as part of the gen­er­al move to­wards the for­ma­tion of a new TTFA elite league in 2020.

9. The ser­vices of an en­gi­neer will be se­cured to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive re­port on the Home of Foot­ball, which re­mains closed to the pub­lic while sev­er­al ap­provals, in­clud­ing Fire Ser­vice and the Cer­tifi­cate of Com­ple­tion, re­main out­stand­ing.

10. The Shel­don Phillips le­gal mat­ter will be im­me­di­ate­ly with­drawn from the In­dus­tri­al Court and an out of court set­tle­ment agreed with Phillips.

11. Sha­ka His­lop was ap­point­ed TTFA Am­bas­sador. Ad­di­tion­al Am­bas­sadors will be ap­point­ed in ap­proach­ing months.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian

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“Tallest” fired as head coach.
By Joel Bailey (Newsday).

DENNIS “TALLEST” Lawrence has been fired as head coach of T&T's senior men’s national football team with immediate effect.

According to a media release from the TT Football Association (TTFA) on Sunday, “The services of Lawrence as national team coach were terminated with immediate effect following a majority decision by the board.”

The TTFA had a nine-hour board meeting on Saturday at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva with its elected officers (president William Wallace, vice-presidents Clynt Taylor, Susan Warrick and Joseph Sam Phillip) and eight of 12 member delegates from Central FA, Eastern FA, Northern FA, Southern FA, TT Pro League, TT Referees Association, TT Super League and Women’s League Football (WoLF).

The media release noted, “Immediately following the decision of the board, Wallace contacted Lawrence via telephone to inform him of the decision and wished him well in his personal and professional life, while also thanking him for his services to the men’s team.

“The TTFA president and Lawrence’s representative(s) will meet to discuss the terms of separation,” the release continued.

“Lawrence’s replacement will be announced shortly.”

The 45-year-old Lawrence has endured a heavily-criticised stint as coach, since he was appointed in January 2017.

He only guided the team to six victories since replacing Belgian Tom Saintfiet.

And former TTFA president David John-Williams, in a Newsday interview last month, said, “Unfortunately, we live in a society of instant gratification and (are) results-oriented. And we live in a society where we see in the English Premiership, where a man loses five games and they buss he throat.

“Because in the morning, you know what? I could go and pick up a coach in the morning. And that same coach who get he throat buss could go to a next team and get nine wins on a trot. But we don’t live in a country where we could pick up a men’s national team coach like that.

“We don’t have the money to fire Dennis Lawrence in the morning.”