Four years and two successful legal battles since the 2006 Germany World Cup, the "Soca Warriors'' look set to receive bonuses promised by Minister of Works and Transport and Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) Special Adviser Jack Warner.
Still, the players' attorney, English solicitor Michael Townley, cautioned his clients that, despite positive judgments from the London-based Sport Dispute Resolution Panel (SDRP) and the local High Court, they should not rule out further delay tactics from the TTFF who are accused of trying to deny justice.
Whatever the final outcome, it is a disgraceful end to one of Trinidad and Tobago 's greatest sporting legacies and reflects poorly on the tenure of Warner, the country's most experienced and successful sporting administrator and the person who negotiated the controversial bonus deal.
The TTFF's accounting over the past four years has been contradictory at best.
In October 2006, the TTFF declared World Cup earnings of $18,255,952 and a net profit of $282,203 from which the Warriors were offered $5,644.08 per player. After the players rejected this figure, the T&TFF "revised'' their calculations and came up with a net profit of $950,403.49, which meant $19,008.07 per player.
Two years later, in a curt meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Port of Spain, Warner made a "take it or leave it'' offer to the players of US$30,000 or $193,569 each. By then, a Freedom of Information Act request had placed the TTFF's World Cup income at $173,690,113.50 exclusive of gate receipts from World Cup qualifying and friendly matches, broadcast rights including television revenue and several international sponsors.
The TTFF's shifting stance regarding the legal battle also seems dubious.
As the players prepared to file suit against the sporting body in the local High Court, a FIFA Congress, which Warner attended in his capacity as FIFA vice-president, announced an amendment to its statutes on May 30, 2007 that obliged all member associations "to insert a clause in their statutes or regulations stipulating that disputes affecting the football family may not be taken to ordinary courts of law".
Warner subsequently declared that the Warriors' proposed use of the High Court could result in the country's expulsion from FIFA—a move that would ban local club and national teams from playing against teams outside their shores and kill the dreams of hundreds of local players seeking overseas jobs. But, after the Warriors accepted the SDRP alternative offered by the TTFF and won there, the same sporting body then used the High Court in an effort to deny the players their judgment. It was unsuccessful there too.
It seems certain that the TTFF, of which Warner remains a special part of, owes the Warriors and surely a forensic, independent audit of the football body is in keeping with the transparency insisted upon by the ruling Government.
It is time for the TTFF to come clean.