Members of this country’s National senior team met with Minister of Sport Anil Roberts on two occasions last week to discuss payments owed to them for 13 international matches.
According to one of the players, the meetings, held at the Minister’s office, were cordial and left them with a sense of hope. Roberts agreed to meet with the handful of players after they made the request on their return from Martinique where the team contested the Digicel Cup finals without success.
“Basically we wanted to sit with him to give our views as players. We were being told over and over by the manager that the payments will be made but the TTFF was waiting on Government to approve the funds. The minister said certain things had to be put in place,” the player said.
“We also went to him to talk about our disappointment in the Digicel Cup. We are the most disappointed and also mad with ourselves, because we let the coach and the country down. Most of all we felt badly for the coach.
And we spoke to the minister, not to defend the coach, but to let him know that it was mainly the players who performed badly. “We believe if the TTFF wants to bring a new coach, they should look at keeping on Russell Latapy in some way. He knows our football, he knows the players and he brought in some young players since he’s been in charge who are definitely the future.
It would be sad to see him go this way,” the player added. The player added: “We are feeling the hurt and I think it’s unfair to blame the coach only. He has been speaking over and over on the need for us to bring home the results and that everything would fall in place.
He kept us rallying even though the conditions were not the best. “We are not greedy men. We don’t put pressure on the Federation to provide certain things like some other countries do.
We are proud to wear the colours but no player around the world plays for his country for charity. “We have families to look after and when a man is being told he will get a certain amount of money even if it’s a little, when time comes and he’s being put off over and over, it could play on your mind but the coach had us rallying.
Unfortunately even though we played well in Trinidad in the three matches, it all fell apart in Martinique. I think if the coach could have gone out and played, he would have done that too,” the player continued. Minister Roberts was out of the country.