St Rose vs the Jordans: How NLCL tournament ran afoul of TTFA Safeguarding Dept

NLCL directors Brian Jordan and his wife Germaine Jordan officially announced the cancellation of the 2024/25 season of the NLCL Under-19 Community Cup, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most prominent nationwide youth football competitions, on 30 December 2024.

Their decision to pull the plug on the competition was preceded by a 90-day provisional suspension from “all football related activities”, relayed to the organisers by Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) safeguarding manager Gary St Rose on 25 November 2024.

The sanction was more than 12 months in the making—the culmination of a disagreement between two sets of football officials, St Rose and the Jordans, that cut across two TTFA administrations and could not be quelled by dozens of phone calls, emails, a meeting, and an attempted mediation.

Remarkably, the NLCL officials were not the target of the TTFA’s Safeguarding unit to begin with.

St Rose’s initial focus was on a local coach, Lester Young, who was not certified by his department. Young was arrested for indecent behaviour with a juvenile in New Orleans, 17 years ago.

Young worked with several local teams at all levels since his return to Trinidad. But the TTFA’s new safeguarding era, an initiative prompted by Fifa, meant his supposed involvement with a local youth team was flagged.

“At the surface, it is about not cooperating in an investigation into SMS (Soccer Made Simple), but that was entirely untrue,” said Jordan (B), who insisted that his executive tried to satisfy all requests by St Rose.

St Rose had a different view.

“The safeguarding policy has two main goals: to screen the people coming into football; and, if people have been found guilty of some sort of abuse, to get them out of football,” said St Rose. “If someone takes actions that undermine any of those two goals, they can be guilty of a breach.

“So, for example, if I say Club X should not engage with Team Y, because there is an issue with Team Y. And if Club X says that is my partner from long time and I will still play them a practice game; what that does is undermine our effort to keep certain people out of football.

“There are not a lot of people we want out—but there are people who are doing things that are abusive to children and we need to get them out.

“The NLCL was [felt] to be in breach of our policy in that regard. The action that they took was not in line with what we are doing.”

The Jordans explained further.

The Safeguarding Department, led by St Rose, received information of Young’s alleged involvement with a club competing in the NLCL Under-19 Community Cup. But, according to the Jordans, they were unable to help the TTFA prove it—because it simply was not true.

Well, not entirely true. Young worked temporarily with SMS as an assistant coach but was no longer affiliated with the team when the TTFA entered its safeguarding era.

“Every single person who is involved in the NLCL tournament, including our liaisons (effectively, match commissioners all safeguard certified, because we think it is a laudable initiative,” said Jordan (B). “We arguably have the strictest safeguarding policy of all [local] leagues. Every single person listed as staff with our teams must provide safeguard certificates as part of their registration process.

“All our liaisons report to us on if there are safeguarding issues that should be reported to TTFA. And there is no game that isn’t supervised.

“[…] Lester was not registered with SMS, and he didn’t sit on their bench for the entire season. Gary said we didn’t provide Lester’s registration documentation. There was none!”

Suffice to say that St Rose and the Jordans did not take to each other, during the course of the probe.

“When people take an arrogant stance and someone feels he is the smartest person in the room, sometimes it doesn’t work for them,” said St Rose. “And they tie up themselves—they keep going down the rabbit hole.”

Jordan (B) claimed that the initial probe began during their bid process for a “major local youth tournament” in 2023. And the suspension notice came just as he was preparing to bid for the event again.

“In our minds, there was a conflict of interest with Gary being business partners with Shem Alexander from Gateway Athletics,” Jordan (B). “And your business partner is vying for the award of a big youth tournament in the competition while we are faced with false allegations from you.

“We wondered what was the driving force. We were not saying that was it, but it could be.”

Gateway Athletic managing director Shem Alexander ran the Republic Bank National Youth Football League (RBNYFL) since 2022. Alexander and St Rose launched the International Institute of Sports and Management Studies (IISMS) in June 2024.

It means that Alexander, who is facing charges from the US Department of Justice at present for an unrelated matter, already had possession of the RBNYFL gig for more than a year when Jordan unsuccessfully bid for it in 2023.

Jordan said he was invited to bid by Republic Bank at the time, although there is no evidence that St Rose’s probe was known to the financial institution or influenced their final decision.

“This issue has been going on for over a year, so [the provisional suspension] is not an arbitrary or hasty decision,” St Rose told Wired868. “What Brian is trying to do is tarnish my reputation and litigate his matter in the public domain. That Shem thing is grasping at straws and I sent his statements to a lawyer for review.

“[…] I have no interest in organising football. If I wanted to, I have enough technical expertise to do it… I am involved in the things that I want to be involved in—it is as plain and simple as that.

“This is nothing personal. It is purely based on policy.”

St Rose and the Jordans met with then TTFA general secretary Amiel Mohammed and attorney Richard Mason during the normalisation period, in an effort to come to an understanding.

They tried again with current TTFA president Kieron Edwards in May or June. Once more, they were unsuccessful.

St Rose was adamant that the Jordans, as the NLCL Community Cup’s chief administrators, failed to properly cooperate with the TTFA’s Safeguarding Department. The Jordans, just as vehemently, denied the charge.

“How the process goes is I have a complaint against Lasana, my first step is to call Lasana and say ‘this is the concern I have against you’,” said St Rose. “If you say, I really did so and so. Then I might accept that and say you are not to do it again. The matter is now closed.

“Alternatively, Lasana may say ‘that is not true’. Now we have a conflict of information because one person says one thing and someone else says something else.

“So, at this point, I inform the TTFA officially and a preliminary investigation begins… Even at that point, it could still stop if you come out and say that ‘in retrospect, I really take responsibility and this is what happened’.”

More than six months ago, after their attempted mediation, Edwards called the Jordans. St Rose, the TTFA president said, would drop the matter if they apologised for their behaviour during the course of their investigation.

“My wife asked whether he meant apology or explanation,” said Jordan (B), “because an apology suggests we admit to something we didn’t do. So we agreed with the president to write an explanation.

“Gary didn’t accept it; and the president asked us to redo the letter. We said please advise what you mean by redo. He never responded.”

St Rose retorted that he is not operating unilaterally.

“[…] When I do my report, it goes to our legal counsel who provides an expert legal opinion on whether we should go forward,” he said. “We went through all that and when we reached to the last stage, mediation was requested.

“We went through mediation—mediation failed… So, you see how many steps?

“This has been going on for over a year under two iterations of the TTFA who both moved this forward. It is the [TTFA] secretariat who has to set up the resources for the tribunal, not me… The secretariat has to find this thing to be worth it.

“[…] We can’t discuss the issues of the case, but as you ask about the process: the process is there. And the process was painstakingly followed with NLCL.”

St Rose confirmed that he would have quashed the entire thing with an apology.

“After mediation failed, the President said ‘Gary, they are involved in youth football and we don’t mind working with them, I believe we should give them an opportunity to apologise’,” he said. “I said if that is your view, I support it. So, the President asked them for an apology.

“If they said ‘we did something wrong and wouldn’t do it again’, that would be the end of the process. If they don’t, then we still have a dispute. And who determines right from wrong? A tribunal!

“We had already drawn up charges but we said we would accept a simple apology. Then they sent something telling us we don’t know what we are doing. That is madness—what they did was continue the dispute.

“So, we are saying one thing and they are saying another, and the dispute was never settled. So, it means we have to settle it formally.”

The Jordans are adamant too.

“We have never broken a safeguarding rule ever,” said Jordan (B). “So, for us to say sorry would be a little bit much. And when it comes to the timing of these things, it is always around the bid for that youth competition.”

Jordan (B) said his service to youth football follows a higher calling. He was critically ill at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, in 2016, when he made a deal with Him.

“I said God, if you save me, I will do everything in my power to help young footballers,” he said.

The former Naparima College football team captain worked as a youth coach at St Benedict’s College and Presentation College (San Fernando), but he went bigger.

In 2019, he launched a nationwide youth competition that kicked off on 21 December and ran between the Christmas and Carnival periods. He said the various football administrators thought he was mad.

(The NLCL Community competition was sanctioned by late TTFA president David John-Williams, kicked off under his successor William Wallace and, after the Covid-19 pandemic, ran under normalisation committee chair Robert Hadad and current boss, Edwards.)

The established wisdom was that football competitions would struggle with the disruptions posed by the festive and bacchanal seasons.

“John-Williams wanted us to put the money into the Youth Pro League,” said Jordan (B). “We wanted to touch rural communities as well as urban communities, as that is where at-risk kids are.

“When I insisted on the way that we wanted to go, his reply was: ‘is your money, so you could waste it’.”

There were 11 teams in the 2019/20 NLCL Community Cup, which included Fatima College, Trendsetter Hawks, Hearts of Maloney and Point Fortin Civic. By 2024, their Under-19 Community Cup expanded to 14 teams, inclusive of Tobago, while they staged under-15 and under-12 competitions too.

City FC, Caledonia AIA, Pro Series, FC Santa Rosa and Cantaro United were among the teams who took part along the way.

“The best thing about the NLCL Community Cup is it is well organised,” said Jordan (B). “And you know what they say is the worst thing? That we are well organised.”

He chuckled.

“You have to do things in a particular order in our competition and if you don’t, we have disciplinary matters,” he said. “It cannot just be about the youngsters being asked to raise their standards, it has to be about the administrators too.”

Jordan (G) said the local football landscape is worse off without the NLCL’s competitions and pointed to players who supposedly got scholarships from their matches, which are sometimes broadcast live on YouTube.

She insisted that the “fallout from the suspension is far greater than any risk posed”.

“Our history shows we are about safeguarding and protecting the youths,” said Jordan (G). “This tournament gives these youth footballers the opportunity to be seen, which is something many of the youths from the rural areas never experienced. Now, they can go on YouTube or TTT or Wired868 and read about themselves or watch videos about them.

“We have had foreign coaches approach players and offer them scholarships based on that; coaches are able to scout players.

“These are the opportunities that have been stolen from our youngsters. That is what I want people to understand.

“We just had a state of emergency called—if we are about football and development, tell me if this suspension is really making sense.”

Both parties agree that the suspension could and probably should have been avoided. But they could not find a way to do so.

“In the three years since the Safeguarding Department has operated, we informed the public that two people were not registered with us: Terrence Marcelle, and Lester Young,” said St Rose. “We have provisionally suspended three or four persons tops: Daniel Henry, Lindsay Rondon and NLCL.

“[…] So, for over three years, we have been very measured in how we take action against people—because you don’t want to discourage people from taking part in football, but you also want people to curb their behaviours.”

Incidentally, Henry and Rondon both received 90-day suspensions on 2 April 2024, just two weeks before Edwards replaced Hadad at the helm of the TTFA.

From that stage, it is the TTFA secretariat’s job to arrange for a tribunal to look into their alleged misdeeds—but that was not done in either case, although Mohammed was general secretary for the entire period of the suspension.

Both men never got the opportunity to clear their names or, conversely, be held to account before their suspensions expired in June 2024. Rondon, a former member of the Malick Secondary technical staff, moved to the St Benedict’s College football team for the 2024 season.

The Jordans, ironically, are likely to be the first to face a TTFA tribunal on safeguarding charges—for not saying sorry.