Af­ter a four-hour meet­ing among Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts; his Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles; the Board of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T, in­clud­ing di­rec­tors Adri­an Ali, Ne­fer­ti­ti Ker­na­han, Ndu-Bisi Hall, Kester Lendor, the chair­man, Shaun Teekas­ingh, the deputy chair­man, and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Arnold Ram; and the mem­bers of 15 Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs), which last­ed from 10 am to 2 pm, there was no so­lu­tion to the fi­nan­cial prob­lems plagu­ing sports in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T).

Min­is­ter Watts, who failed to make it to a pre­vi­ous meet­ing on May 11, de­spite calls by the NG­Bs to at­tend, was the one to have arranged Wednes­day’s (June 3) meet­ing and en­sured that his per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, who was al­so de­mand­ed at the ini­tial meet­ing, was present. How­ev­er, the NG­Bs left the meet­ing which took place at the VIP lounge of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, ut­ter­ing one sen­tence: ‘We are in re­al trou­ble.’

It ap­peared to have been the gen­er­al con­sen­sus af­ter Min­is­ter Watts raised eye­brows when he said he was un­aware of the fund­ing freeze that left ath­letes and the NG­Bs mo­tion­less for months.