No worries, says suspended St Thomas FA

Wayne Thompson, president of the St Thomas Football Association, says he is not overly concerned following the Jamaica Football Federation’s (JFF) decision to suspend the member privileges for his parish association.

In a press release yesterday, the JFF announced that the St Thomas Football Association, along with the Trelawny Football Association, have been suspended due to the failure to hold their elections by the mandated August 31 deadline.

“This suspension of membership privileges will be in force until the parish has their election, and the process is satisfactory to the JFF Board, and if at the next meeting of the board the elections are still outstanding, then the board will consider further action if necessary,” the JFF’s statement read.

Thompson has since accepted the decision which he said did not come as a surprise to his association.

In fact, Thompson applauded the JFF’s stance as he said it showed the federation will be consistent in keeping parish associations accountable in fulfilling their duties.

“We know it is a part of governance and the fact that it is being exposed and transparent, I think everyone should know as we are about keeping everything above board,” Thompson said.

“It means that we would have expected that the JFF would hold all of us accountable just as they would themselves. Not just in terms of the annual general meeting, but with all other requirements and executions and engagements of stakeholders. These are all governance issues and this is the only way we’re going to see growth.”

Thompson explained that his association had the intention of meeting the August 31 deadline which was issued by the JFF.

However, issues with auditing their accounts had caused delays which then prevented the association from holding their annual general meeting in time.

He explained that the delay was communicated to the JFF who are aware the issue will be sorted by next month.

“We have been communicating with them and then they had actually reached out to us about it,” he explained. “Our AGM is actually being arranged so I don’t feel there is a risk because we’re planning to have our AGM in October.

“We experienced some difficulties re the auditing of our accounts and we felt strongly about the accounts being audited. So the delay was in relation to that so part of that was to identify another auditor. They are working with us now to meet the new guidelines but that was the issue that caused our delay.”

Thompson sought to assure clubs based in the parish that the current suspension will not have any major effects on the parish operations.

He said the St Thomas FA will be reinstated before the proposed November start date of their under-17 competition.

“What we plan to do is to start our under-17 competition, which is a prerequisite for our Major League competition, for a date sometime in early November. So we will have AGM before because there is a lot of planning and approval which will be required beforehand.”

The date for the St Thomas elections is yet to be set, but Thompson is confident they will correct all issues without hampering their parish competitions.