For­mer na­tion­al Un­der-17 boys’ team coach Shawn Coop­er has failed in his bid to have his long-stand­ing pro­hi­bi­tion against coach­ing mi­nors lift­ed. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral de­ci­sion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo dis­missed Coop­er’s ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion over a move by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to sus­pend his Safe­guard­ing Li­cence in mid-March last year. 

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo agreed with sub­mis­sions pre­sent­ed by the TTFA’s lawyer Ste­fan Ramkissoon, of Sov­er­eign Cham­bers, who ques­tioned Coop­er’s de­lay in seek­ing the in­ter­im re­lief pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a sub­stan­tive case over his sus­pen­sion. 

She al­so found that Coop­er failed to bring ev­i­dence to prove that he has pend­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties he would miss out on if the ban is not im­me­di­ate­ly lift­ed. 

“In my opin­ion, the de­lay weighs heav­i­ly against the grant­i­ng of the in­ter­im re­lief, but I al­so take in­to ac­count the fail­ure to pro­vide the ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to the ir­repara­ble harm,” Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo said. 

The sus­pen­sion was ex­e­cut­ed by TTFA Safe­guard­ing, Play­er Care and Well-be­ing man­ag­er Gary St Rose months af­ter the team nar­row­ly missed out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion for last year’s Un­der-17 World Cup in Qatar. 

While the ex­act rea­son for the sus­pen­sion was nev­er re­vealed, it was re­port­ed­ly based on con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of the team af­ter the failed qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign. 

It came un­der Sec­tion III, Ar­ti­cle 29 of the TTFA’s Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren and Vul­ner­a­ble Per­sons Pol­i­cy and Frame­work, which gives the TTFA the pow­er to take ac­tion against li­cence hold­ers if they are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for abuse, breach of the pol­i­cy or a crim­i­nal of­fence. 

“These re­stric­tions would in­clude but not be lim­it­ed to the fol­low­ing: su­per­vi­sion re­quire­ments, re­port­ing re­quire­ments, age group re­stric­tions, re­stric­tions to spe­cif­ic groups, and pro­vi­sion­al sus­pen­sion,” the pol­i­cy states.

Last month, Coop­er filed a defama­tion law­suit against the TTFA and St Rose. 

In the law­suit, Coop­er ac­cused St Rose of be­ing bi­ased in tak­ing the ac­tion, as he point­ed to an email sent by St Rose to TTFA Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards in De­cem­ber 2024 ques­tion­ing his (Coop­er’s) men­tal state. 

He al­so claimed that the cor­re­spon­dence an­nounc­ing his sus­pen­sion false­ly sug­gest­ed that he was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for abus­ing play­ers. 

“By way of in­nu­en­do, the words com­plained of meant, or were un­der­stood by right-think­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety to mean, that the Claimant was un­fit and un­suit­able to coach young play­ers,” his lawyers said. 

Through the law­suit, Coop­er is claim­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion as he con­tends the ac­tion caused ir­repara­ble harm to his dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion as a youth team coach and af­fect­ed his cur­rent and fu­ture em­ploy­ment prospects. 

Dur­ing his al­most two-decade-long ca­reer, Coop­er coached youth na­tion­al boys’ and girls’ teams and led Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege to Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) ti­tles.

He al­so claimed that the sus­pen­sion was un­law­ful and op­pres­sive, as it is in­def­i­nite. His lawyer Roland Bain al­so claimed that the pol­i­cy on­ly al­lowed pro­vi­sion­al sus­pen­sions last­ing for 90 days. 

In de­cid­ing the in­junc­tion, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo found that the three-month lim­it on sus­pen­sions should be de­cid­ed at an even­tu­al tri­al of the sub­stan­tive case, as she not­ed that the TTFA is con­tend­ing that it (the lim­it) ap­plies to breach­es of oth­er sec­tions of the pol­i­cy and not un­der the sec­tion that ap­plied to Coop­er.

“In my view, again, the ap­pli­cant hasn’t demon­strat­ed, not at this in­ter­locu­to­ry stage, that that 90-day lim­i­ta­tion that is con­tained in ar­ti­cle 77 nec­es­sar­i­ly gov­erns every safe­guard­ing re­stric­tion that is im­posed un­der ar­ti­cle 29,” Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo said. 

The TTFA was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Aman­da Singh. 

Coop­er was or­dered to pay the TTFA and St Rose’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.