LAST season’s Caribbean club champions Waterhouse FC have issued a statement, blaming last-minute flight plans for their no-show at the 2015 edition of the tournament, which was held in Trinidad & Tobago from April 15 to 19.

The Jamaican club said sponsorship to cover their expense at the tournament was delayed, which meant that at late notice, administrators were left scrambling to confirm flight seats for players and staff travelling to the twin-island republic.

“The Waterhouse Football Club regrets not participating in the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) competition …the [club’s] executive apologises unreservedly to our players, supporters, the Waterhouse community and the wider football fraternity,” a section of the statement said.

“Competitions of this nature require significant funding for which, on this occasion, the club looked outside its regular sponsors for support. However, commitments that were made materialised very close to the tournament date, by which time the club had difficulties securing sufficient seats for the squad and technical team due to flights being full, with persons returning home from Sunday’s staging of Carnival.

“We were then faced with having the team travel through Fort Lauderdale, however, several members do not hold a United States visa. Extraordinary efforts were then made to arrange a charter flight, but only 19 persons could travel on the charter, which would not have arrived in Trinidad until 8:00 pm [last] Wednesday, with the first match being scheduled for 4:30 pm [the same day].

“We communicated with the director of the competition and informed of our misfortunes in not making it to Trinidad on time for the first scheduled match. We regret not being able to defend our title and, more so, the level of embarrassment on the players, management, executive, the community and all our supporters due to our circumstances,” it further said.

Waterhouse stressed that the players were committed to defending their title.

“As the defending champions, our players took pride in their past achievements and looked forward to their title defence with excitement and optimism,” the release stated.

According to the statement, the club is focused on recovering from the debacle.

“We know that the wounds are still fresh, but we are committed to the healing process and the team is committed to moving forward and putting in place policies to prevent future such occurrences. We now direct our focus to the remainder of the [Red Stripe] Premier League season with high hopes of securing a position in the CFU competition.”

Waterhouse are second in the Premier League and have already qualified for the semi-finals. The two finalists will gain places to next season’s CFU Club Championship.