In to­tal dis­agree­ment with the pun­ish­ment hand­ed to youth coach Shawn Coop­er, Jef­fer­son George, the pres­i­dent of the Uni­fied Foot­ball Coach­es of T&T (UFCTT) has called for trans­paren­cy and un­der­stand­ing by all coach­es and the Safe­guard­ing unit.

Coop­er, the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege - San Fer­nan­do head coach who re­cent­ly came with­in a win away from qual­i­fy­ing the coun­try's na­tion­al Un­der-17 boys' team for the U-17 World Cup in Qatar lat­er this year, was slapped with a ban from coach­ing mi­nors un­der the age of 18 years of age.

A let­ter from the Safe­guard­ing De­part­ment of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) stat­ed that in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion III and Ar­ti­cle 29 of the Safe­guard­ing pol­i­cy and Frame­work v3.0, age group re­stric­tions have been placed on the Safe­guard­ing Li­cense of Coop­er. The pol­i­cy states that where a per­son and or or­gan­i­sa­tion is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for abuse, a breach of the Safe­guard­ing pol­i­cy, or for a crim­i­nal of­fence, the TTFA shall im­pose con­di­tions on that per­son's or or­gan­i­sa­tion's li­cense to work with chil­dren, youth play­ers and vul­ner­a­ble groups.

The ban was hand­ed to Coop­er in a let­ter from the Safe­guard­ing man­ag­er Gary St Rose on March 15, fol­low­ing the ques­tion­ing of the play­ers on the na­tion­al Un­der-17 team. Coop­er has since vowed to re­spond soon.

Yes­ter­day though, George said he was un­hap­py with the de­vel­op­ment as he and his or­gan­i­sa­tion had tried to pre­vent such a de­vel­op­ment even be­fore it went pub­lic.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports, George said: "We would have reached out when we got the no­tice to the head of Safe­guard­ing Mr Gary St Rose and the pres­i­dent to let them know that our pri­ma­ry con­cern was to make sure that we have a prop­er a kind of stan­dard­ise sys­tem. Every­body who did the safe­guard­ing course would have been up­dat­ed with the safe­guard­ing poli­cies, the pro­ce­dure for coach­es who are ques­tioned or who breach the safe­guard­ing pro­ce­dure, what is the pol­i­cy, what is the pro­ce­dure to go through and that is what we're try­ing to get down.

"The is­sue we have with Mr Coop­er is that the claim or the charge against him was that he was not able to give his state­ment, so the in­for­ma­tion com­ing in­to the pub­lic do­main, re­al­ly puts him at a se­vere dis­ad­van­tage when he gives his side. That for me was a very un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion.

"The safe­guard­ing unit, we un­der­stand their role which is a sig­nif­i­cant one and we al­ways try to work with them to make sure the en­vi­ron­ment is a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial one that has trust, and per­sons can be held ac­count­able be­cause we want young peo­ple to have the con­fi­dence that their in­ter­est would be looked at. So, it's not some­thing that we take light­ly, but then we don't want a sit­u­a­tion where claims are be­ing made and in­fo go­ing in­to the pub­lic space that per­sons who would have worked and built up a ca­reer and gained cred­i­bil­i­ty and trust, can be chal­lenged un­fair­ly."

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to some lo­cal coach­es, they re­fused to com­ment, say­ing there was a need for clar­i­ty on the mat­ter first. Coop­er's re­sponse is ex­pect­ed to be sup­port­ed by a le­gal team, with the coach him­self telling Guardian Me­dia that he too was un­sure of the charge.

George said: "Our pri­ma­ry con­cern even be­fore the mat­ter be­came pub­lic was to en­gage with the safe­guard­ing of­fice which we con­tin­ue to do up to to­day, and the pres­i­dent was al­so very will­ing to en­gage in some of the mat­ters as well."