Trinidad and To­ba­go faced a harsh re­al­i­ty on Fri­day night, as its 2014 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign came to a de­press­ing end fol­low­ing its 2-1 de­feat to hosts Guyana, in their Con­ca­caf Group B Sec­ond Round qual­i­fi­er at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Prov­i­dence, Guyana. The re­sult pushed Guyana to an un­catch­able 13 points go­ing in­to Tues­day's re­turn en­counter at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. Min­nows An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, with a pop­u­la­tion of on­ly 89,000 al­so cre­at­ed his­to­ry by ad­vanc­ing to the se­mi-fi­nal round as they de­feat­ed Haiti 1-0 at home. They now join USA, Guatemala and Ja­maica in the next round. Guyana will tan­gle with El Sal­vador, Mex­i­co and Cos­ta Ri­ca. And T&T – a prop­er eval­u­a­tion and re­group­ing in a con­cert­ed ef­fort to get its foot­ball back on the path that it can bring a lev­el of suc­cess, re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion. An 11th minute goal by Ricky Shakes, who once wore a T&T shirt in a friend­ly ver­sus Ice­land in 2006 and an 81st minute by Leon Court turned the "So­ca War­riors" over as Guyana lived up to its pre-match pre­dic­tions of a win over the vis­i­tors. A Ken­wyne Jones 91st minute item came ob­vi­ous­ly too late for T&T. It was the first time since the 1982 World Cup cam­paign when they drew 0-0 with Nether­lands An­tilles twice, that T&T failed to progress in­to the penul­ti­mate qual­i­fy­ing round or se­mi-fi­nal stage of the qual­i­fiers.

T&T-born head coach Ja­maal Shabazz ap­peared at a loss for words af­ter Fri­day's win say­ing on­ly to some mem­bers of the T&T con­tin­gent, "What can I say," as he too tried to come to terms with what un­doubt­ed­ly was Guyana's proud­est foot­balling mo­ment and one of their biggest ever sport­ing achieve­ments. T&T's head coach Ot­to Pfis­ter was left to pon­der his next move. "This my friends is some­thing you nev­er look for­ward to and it is some­thing that is al­ways dif­fi­cult to ac­cept and un­der­stand. But it must be a les­son in life for all of us. When you look back now, for me this cam­paign was lost when we lost in Bermu­da. If you look back at the round, that re­sult made it dif­fi­cult for us and we did not come back like we should. Okay this is life, you are out one day and then you have to de­cide how you pick your­self up and go again," Pfis­ter said af­ter the match. Days like this one are not what any play­er, staff mem­ber or sup­port­er can stom­ach and it was a fact ac­cept­ed by the play­ers and staff fol­low­ing the match. "Every­thing we are say­ing af­ter the game in terms of what we should have done was said in the pre-match ear­li­er to­day. We lacked a lot of things out there to­day. They want­ed it more and now we have to face this de­feat and see how much we re­al­ly have that de­sire to suc­ceed in the game," Jones added.

As­sis­tant coach An­ton Corneal, in his talk with the play­ers af­ter the loss likened the per­for­mance by Guyana to the at­ti­tude of Guyanese work­men at his home in Trinidad. "When I think about the sit­u­a­tion now it re­minds me of the two Guyanese work­men at my home. The rea­son they are there do­ing the work...it's a job no oth­er Trinida­di­an wants to do be­cause it is not in their in­ter­est or they are not pre­pared to do a job like this.

The Guyanese men are pre­pared to work for $250 a day but the Trinida­di­an wants $400 for the same job and if you can­not give them that then they pre­fer to hang on the block and hus­tle. They are pre­pared to not do the job," Corneal said. "One par­tic­u­lar night the two men came to me just be­fore night time and asked to put up two lights in the back­yard and I asked them if they were crazy...go home and we would work again to­mor­row," he ex­plained. Corneal said: "No­body is more dis­ap­point­ed than the play­ers and the staff. We feel very sor­ry about the sit­u­a­tion we're in right now but at the end of the day we have to take a clos­er look at our­selves if we in­tend to im­prove what we are right now. And it starts with a lot more pas­sion and de­sire to give every­thing when we're in it whether it be for the coun­try's na­tion­al foot­ball team or in our own per­son­al lives away from foot­ball." The T&T dress­ing room felt ex­act­ly like one should at end of a game in which a World Cup qual­i­fy­ing dream turned in­to a night­mare fin­ish. And a wall apart, the Guyanese team em­braced the joy of vic­to­ry. Shabazz added: "This is his­to­ry for Guyana and we cre­at­ed it tonight by show­ing what be­lief, de­ter­mi­na­tion and a will to ac­com­plish some­thing can do for our lives and for a coun­try. This is a mo­ment we dreamt about, that I dreamt about and we worked to­geth­er and made it hap­pen." The T&T team re­turned home yes­ter­day and will face Guyana again on Tues­day, with a game that holds lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance ex­cept for some dig­ni­ty. The match will kick-off at 5 pm at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

Full Time - T&T 1 (Ken­wyne Jones 91) vs 2 Guyana (Ricky Shakes 11, Leon Cort 81).

Teams

Trinidad & To­ba­go: - 1. Mar­vin Phillip, 11. Car­los Ed­wards, 5. Julius James, 20. Seon Pow­er, 4. Akeem Adams, 8. Khaleem Hy­land, 7. Christo­pher Bir­chall (15. Hugh­tun Hec­tor 39th), 16. Kevin Moli­no (Yel­low 29), 13. Lester Pelti­er (14. Stern John 56th), 9. Ken­wyne Jones (capt), 19. Keon Daniel (12. Kendall Jagdeosingh 55th).

Subs: - 21. Jan-Michael Williams, 6. Oe­si Teles­ford, 3. Car­lyle Mitchell, 10. Hay­den Tin­to, 17. An­tho­ny Wolfe, 18. An­drei Pacheco.

Coach: - Ot­to Pfis­ter (Ger­many).

Guyana: - 1. Ron­son Williams, 2. Jake New­ton, 4. Leon Cort (Yel­low 82), 5. Wal­ter Moore, 16. Kay­o­de McK­in­non, 7. Dwain Ja­cobs (3.Christo­pher Bourne 75th), 13.Charles Pol­lard, 8.Chris Nurse (capt), 10. Carl Cort, 21. Ricky Shakes, 11. Gre­go­ry Richard­son (17. Vur­lon Mills 58th) (Yel­low 68).

Subs: - 14. An­tho­ny Ben­field, 19. Travis Grant, 20. Dwight Pe­ters, 22. Richard Reynolds.

Coach: - Ja­mal Shabaaz (T&T).

Ref­er­ee: - En­ri­co Wi­jn­gaarde (Suri­name).