Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Women War­riors’ hopes of ad­vanc­ing to the 2023 FI­FA World Cup fell short on Mon­day night af­ter they were beat­en 1-0 by Pana­ma in the Con­ca­caf qual­i­fy­ing se­ries in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co.

In the end, Mar­ta Cox's lone item gave the Pana­ma­ni­ans their op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­to a 10-team in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play­off in New Zealand for an­oth­er chance at a World Cup spot - the op­por­tu­ni­ty T&T had been hop­ing for. The Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca and Caribbean neigh­bours Ja­maica earned the au­to­mat­ic World Cup spots avail­able in Mex­i­co.

Even, Haiti booked their chance in the 10-team play­off in New Zealand but there was no room for T&T, who fin­ished point­less af­ter three con­sec­u­tive de­feats in which they con­ced­ed 11 goals and scored none.

Truth be told, skip­per Karyn Forbes and her side did not look the part in Mex­i­co and were prob­a­bly spared the em­bar­rass­men of fur­ther hu­mil­i­a­tion in the next phase, where the com­pe­ti­tion was like­ly to be of the cal­i­bre of the US and Cana­da, who out­matched T&T 6-0 in their open­ing match of this cam­paign.

The team will now have to fo­cus on next year’s Con­ca­caf Gold Cup qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment in the US, which will be the next time they take the field com­pet­i­tive­ly at this lev­el.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing an­oth­er failed cam­paign, this news­pa­per can­not lay blame en­tire­ly on Forbes and coach Ken­wyn Jones.

In­deed, it is our hope that the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion us­es the time in be­tween tour­na­ments to re­vamp and re­view its ap­proach to the prepa­ra­tion of teams, since it con­tin­ues to seek suc­cess while us­ing the same for­mu­la.

Coach Jones ad­mit­ted to­wards the back end of this tour­na­ment that he had one of the youngest and in­ex­pe­ri­enced teams in the com­pe­ti­tion. Many of the oth­er teams had ros­ters rich in pro­fes­sion­al and na­tion­al tal­ent due to big­ger and qual­i­ty re­source pools to choose from but that was not the on­ly in­gre­di­ent to their suc­cess.

Even clos­er to home, Caribbean coun­ter­parts Ja­maica are mov­ing on to a sec­ond suc­ces­sive World Cup not so much on­ly on the tal­ent and ex­pe­ri­ence of their team but al­so on the pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach of the Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion.

And there­in lies the prob­lem.

The fi­nan­cial­ly strapped T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) re­mains un­der the stew­ard­ship of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad. How­ev­er, al­most two years in­to its work to rec­ti­fy the body's fi­nan­cial and man­age­ment woes, the com­mit­tee has been un­able to re­vive its for­tunes ei­ther on the field or off it.

As such, all na­tion­al teams have been ham­pered by a lack of prop­er prepa­ra­tion and an in­abil­i­ty to draw the best tal­ent lo­cal­ly and for­eign based to the cause.

The fact is that to pre­pare teams prop­er­ly takes a well-de­signed na­tion­al pro­gramme which de­vel­ops play­ers from youth lev­el straight through to the se­nior with a des­ig­nat­ed plan and set achiev­able goals. Added to this will be to find the best for­eign-based tal­ent to fuse with the lo­cal­ly bred ones and pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for them to train and play to­geth­er.

The TTFA has been un­able to do this for years are we are now reap­ing the whirl­wind at this point in time. Need­less to say, un­til the TTFA sorts if is­sues off the field, we are un­like­ly to find much suc­cess on it go­ing for­ward.