John-Williams wants fresh TTFA mandate

He fell short of de­clar­ing his slate but said all his doc­u­men­ta­tion had been lodged with the TTFA Elec­toral Com­mit­tee well with­in the dead­line which was set back on Oc­to­ber 14.

John-Williams’ an­nounce­ment comes ex­act­ly a week af­ter his chal­lengers, the Unit­ed TTFA which is led by board mem­ber and Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, launched their slate.

John-Williams will be chal­lenged by Wal­lace and Richard Fer­gu­son, own­er of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ter­minix Lim­it­ed, for lead­er­ship of the 111-year-old or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The Unit­ed TTFA will al­so in­clude Sam Phillip, a Su­per League board mem­ber, Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion sec­re­tary Clynt Tay­lor and Women’s Foot­ball League pres­i­dent Su­san Joseph-War­rick. Fer­gu­son’s slate has put up Pro League club ex­ec­u­tive Ray­mond Thom and Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA) pres­i­dent Shymdeo Go­sine. Ed­di­son Dean, who was ini­tial­ly on Fer­gu­son’s slate for the first vice-pres­i­dent po­si­tion, with­drew to sup­port the Unit­ed TTFA’s push for pow­er.

John-Williams, who was elect­ed to the po­si­tion back in 2015, told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that there’s no suc­cess with­out change and no change with­out con­flict, some­thing he said he kept re­mind­ing him­self about dur­ing his first term as TTFA pres­i­dent.

Dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s tour of the Home of Foot­ball fa­cil­i­ties, John-Williams, who was ac­com­pa­nied by gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ca­ma­ra David and mem­bers of staff, said, “Not every­one has agreed with me or my poli­cies. Some per­sons have un­der­mined, at­tempt­ed to de­stroy, ma­lign, at­tack and dam­age me, the TTFA and by ex­ten­sion T&T foot­ball. “Notwith­stand­ing this, but by the grace of the Almighty, and the tru­ly faith­ful, I am still stand­ing.

“Com­ing in­to the TTFA in 2015 brought chal­lenges, too many to men­tion on this oc­ca­sion, but I’ve em­braced them and found in­no­v­a­tive ways to rise above them. It was im­per­a­tive to hit the re­set but­ton. Guid­ed by the man­date giv­en by the mem­ber­ship, I’ve worked tire­less­ly to re­store the good name of the TTFA.”

John-Williams’ four-year term has been marred with con­tro­ver­sy aligned to sev­er­al le­gal bat­tles, in­clud­ing the courts or­der­ing the freez­ing of the TTFA bank ac­count. He has al­so been crit­i­cised for the poor per­for­mances of na­tion­al teams, a lack of trans­paren­cy dur­ing the build­ing of the Home of Foot­ball and has even been la­belled a dic­ta­tor.

How­ev­er, he said he was still able to get things his team pri­ori­tised dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“Quick fix­es are not al­ways pos­si­ble or a re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tion. While some may dis­agree with the or­der of pri­or­i­ties ad­dressed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, and some of the de­ci­sions made, we placed fo­cus on many achieve­ments since as­sum­ing of­fice in 2015.”

Among the suc­cess­es over the last four years, he list­ed the fol­low­ing:

1. Con­struc­tion of qual­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties that will cre­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide rev­enue streams to bring fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty to the TTFA, oth­er NSOs and the coun­try at large through the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther de­vel­op the sports tourism in­dus­try.

2. Restor­ing FI­FA fund­ing which was sus­pend­ed dur­ing the term of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion

3. Pro­duc­ing au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for every year from 2015 on­wards

4. Pay­ing down debts from pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions—To date over $12 mil­lion paid

5. In­creas­ing rev­enue sig­nif­i­cant­ly by our se­nior team play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es on the FI­FA dates against high-lev­el op­po­nents

6. Bring­ing ex­pen­di­ture in line with rev­enues and re­duc­ing the de­pen­den­cy on the trea­sury for fund­ing of the sport.

7. Em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy and IT ex­per­tise to fur­ther en­hance and im­prove as­pects of our on-field pro­grammes, ad­min­is­tra­tion and mar­ket­ing

8. Es­tab­lish­ing a com­pre­hen­sive youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme on the ba­sis of tried and test­ed mod­els that were ably sup­port­ed by the NL­CB

9. Strength­en­ing and deep­en­ing in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal gov­er­nance with ac­count­abil­i­ty, that has re­paired dam­aged re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as CFU, CON­CA­CAF & FI­FA.

Busi­ness­man John-Williams, the for­mer own­er of Pro League club W Con­nec­tion added, “The work of this ad­min­is­tra­tion sim­ply can­not be mea­sured sole­ly by wins or loss­es on the field, but by a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for all that has been achieved through­out my tenure. Over the next two weeks, many ques­tions will be an­swered and a lot will be re­vealed which will con­tin­ue to open the eyes of the mem­bers of the TTFA.

“It is be­cause of this I must say, it is time to fin­ish what we start­ed. There is too much that is fun­da­men­tal­ly im­por­tant right now to al­low the ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T Foot­ball to al­ter the planned strate­gic ini­tia­tives at this time. We’re at the cusp of the break­through that will see our game soar again. As such, af­ter much prayer and con­sul­ta­tion with many stake­hold­ers, I have de­cid­ed to seek re-elec­tion as pres­i­dent of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.”

Asked about the cost to out the 72-room ho­tel, a sports and en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre and train­ing fields which is on the same com­pound with the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre and Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome in Bal­main, he re­spond­ed, “It cost $1.5 mil­lion to out­fit and now foot­ball has a home with an as­set of an es­ti­mat­ed $100 mil­lion which all of T&T must be proud of and the TTFA’s aim is to be first with­in the gov­ern­ment’s sports tourism pro­gramme. On Mon­day (No­vem­ber 18, 2019), the TTFA is ful­ly open for busi­ness which will help in re­duc­ing our debt which is over $34 mil­lion.”

John-Williams said the en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre, which is sep­a­rate from the ho­tel as­pect of the busi­ness plan, would be a ma­jor in­come gen­er­a­tor.