Bluffing T&TFF.
Athletes One slams Warriors' omission.
By: Lasana Liburd (Express).[/size]
Bluffing T&TFF.
It might go down as the most lucrative bluff in the history of local sport. On Friday, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (T&TFF) overlooked 16 of its 2006 World Cup players for the June CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament on the grounds that the rebel "Soca Warriors" were certain to be banned by FIFA over possible court action arising from a pay dispute.
Coach Wim Rijsbergen's subsequent shortlist was notable for the absence of key senior players like Stern John, Kenwyne Jones, Collin Samuel, Aurtis Whitley, Cyd Gray and Brent Sancho.
But English lawyer Michael Townley, whose London-based sports law firm Athletes One Legal represents the unhappy players, remains confident that he has a winning hand and accused T&TFF president Oliver Camps of underestimating the local stars.
"We refer to this in our industry as 'put up or shut up'," Townley told the Sunday Express. "The attitude of the Federation is that the players have a good case but they won't be organised enough or disciplined enough to see it through and they are hiding behind that."
Townley had more potentially unsettling news for Camps. The players are likely to start legal proceedings against the T&TFF in a Trinidad courtroom within the next two weeks.
If the two parties fail to agree by then, Trinidad and Tobago are likely to be the site for a judicial sport battle that seems certain to grab global attention.
FIFA vice-president and T&TFF special adviser Jack Warner will be at the heart of the matter. It is his verbal agreement with the Warriors over sponsorship revenue that preceded the rift.
Both parties agreed to a 50 per cent split before the 2006 World Cup in Germany but, last October, the T&TFF offered just $5,644.08 per player and insisted that expenses were to be deducted and money banked for the 2010 World Cup campaign before settling their deal.
The players rejected the offer and questioned the legitimacy of the T&TFF's accounts.
Townley said he dispatched several letters to the T&TFF but feels he has a better shot at a date with famous screen siren Angelina Jolie than a response from Camps or T&TFF general secretary Richard Groden.
"My letters, I think, have been sensibly written," he said, "and suggested that (failure to respond) would lead to a bigger problem. But the longest response I got was dismissive...just two paragraphs.
"On a scale of one to ten, I think the dialogue between both parties is about one."
Townley, who has more than 20 years' experience in the sport law industry, accused Camps of deliberately misinterpreting the FIFA statues and said that, even if the T&TFF president was correct, such a law would not stand up in the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"I have been a lawyer in this area for 20 years now," said Townley, "and have never seen quoted or referenced a FIFA ruling which says a player cannot bring legal action against a federation and face this sanction.
"If there is a rule, FIFA is a Zurich-based organisation and that rule would be illegal in Switzerland to adopt as it will undoubtedly be illegal against the CAS legislation.
"In FIFA statutes, if a player brings a matter before the court where there is a binding arbitration clause, that may be a matter of sanction. But in the very first correspondence we wrote to T&TFF, last October or November, we asked specifically whether there was any such arbitration clause and they never answered yes or no.
"We are left to assume that the only way of finding justice is through a court of law."
Townley speculated that Camps had tried to use FIFA's law against political interference to suit the T&TFF.
"Camps should quote the rule correctly," he said. "I think this is a simple sophistry. It is a deliberate confusion about the rule of political interference.
"How could that possibly be the case here?"
