Gillette heads new slate for football elections

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that a list of names propos­ing Gillette as the leader, was put for­ward to con­test the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) elec­tion in No­vem­ber. It al­so com­pris­es Sports Colum­nist and en­thu­si­ast Col­in Mur­ray, Brent San­cho, the Cen­tral FC own­er and man­ag­er who, along with Gillette, have been in­flu­en­tial mem­bers of a Com­mis­sion formed to re­struc­ture T&T foot­ball, based on the ad­vice of UE­FA and the FI­FA.

Gillette's nom­i­na­tion for the pres­i­dent's po­si­tion is the sec­ond time the busi­ness­man has been cho­sen to lead the sport. On­ly re­cent­ly a Guardian re­port re­vealed that Gillette's per­for­mance as chair­man of the com­mis­sion saw him gain­ing the sup­port from the fra­ter­ni­ty, as well as some frac­tions of the elec­torate.

How­ev­er, his can­di­da­cy was nul­li­fied by the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion which re­quires him to be in­volved in ac­tive foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion at least three years be­fore the elec­tions. Gillette's stint in the sport has been at the T&T Pro League lev­el with Cen­tral FC, be­fore be­ing named on the com­mis­sion.

It is un­der­stood that San­cho, who has worked with Gillette at the cen­tral club, is set to prove Gillette's le­git­i­ma­cy to be a can­di­date for the elec­tions due to his on­go­ing work with the Cen­tral 'Skarks' which have won three con­sec­u­tive Pro League ti­tles and has com­pet­ed at the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club Cham­pi­onships.

Ar­ti­cle 34 of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion which refers to the elec­tion of mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors, state: "Can­di­dates shall have been ac­tive in foot­ball for at least three years dur­ing the five years pre­ced­ing the elec­tion. This ac­tiv­i­ty must have been per­formed in a man­age­r­i­al or a sim­i­lar po­si­tion in the ter­ri­to­ry of the Re­pub­lic of T&T."

It not­ed al­so: "Can­di­dates may not have pre­vi­ous­ly been found guilty of an in­dictable of­fence: Can­di­dates shall be na­tion­als of and shall have per­ma­nent res­i­dence in the Re­pub­lic of T&T: Can­di­da­tures for the of­fice of pres­i­dent and vice-pres­i­dent of the board of di­rec­tors shall be sup­port­ed by at least one Mem­ber."

At­tempts to con­tact Gillette yes­ter­day proved fu­tile, but Mur­ray ad­mit­ted he was ap­proached to be a vice pres­i­dent for a slate and he ac­cept­ed it.

"Po­si­tion re­al­ly does not mat­ter too much to me. I just want to serve in foot­ball," Mur­ray said.

The for­mer Events Man­ag­er at Carib Brew­ery was al­so a can­di­date for the Ray­mond Tim Kee slate for the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's elec­tion back in 2015 but lost to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tive team be­ing led by David John-Williams.

Mur­ray said the state of T&T foot­ball is the "worst" it has ever been in many years, say­ing: "You need on­ly to look at the is­sues with the women's team, Un­der-21 Olympic team, the U-17 and U-20 teams at the CON­CA­CAF play-offs, and the dis­as­ter at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States re­cent­ly."

John-Williams' slate is set to be chal­lenged by a com­bined group that con­sists of An­tho­ny Har­ford- NFA pres­i­dent, William Wal­lace- SS­FL pres­i­dent, Clynt Tay­lor- CFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Kei­th Look Loy- the T&T Su­per League's pres­i­dent, for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Tim Kee, Shymdeo Go­sine- CFA pres­i­dent and a num­ber of oth­er per­sons.

The group will name its slate next week.