Just un­der one year since its last com­pet­i­tive 15s match, T&T's Men's Na­tion­al Rug­by team will take on re­gion­al ri­val Bar­ba­dos in a cru­cial open­ing NACRA Pool B qual­i­fy­ing fix­ture for the 2015 World Cup, from 4 pm this af­ter­noon. The match will be played at St Mary's Ground, Ser­pen­tine Road, with a thrilling but tense at­mos­phere ex­pect­ed to cloud the venue. T&T are favourites to take the match, as the "Ca­lyp­so War­riors" have won al­most every in­ter­na­tion­al fix­ture be­tween the two. The last time T&T and Bar­ba­dos met was in May last year, with the War­riors tak­ing the match 17–10, in Bridgetown. It will al­so be T&T's first 15s fix­ture since its nar­row 22–20 loss to ri­vals Guyana, which in­ci­den­tal­ly oc­curred at the same venue. Bar­ba­dos, mean­while, is off re­cent suc­cess­es against St Vin­cent this month, in the first round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion, which put the team in­to sec­ond round Pool B, with T&T and Guyana. Bar­ba­dos won its first match 34–3, be­fore rip­ping apart the same op­po­nent 51–0.

Scrum-half Jonathan O'Con­nor will lead the team in his de­but role as skip­per, re­plac­ing his team-mate at Trinidad North­ern, Adam Fred­er­icks, who will start the match as vice-cap­tain. The line-up, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the for­ward po­si­tions, is ex­pect­ed to fea­ture sev­er­al younger, and up­com­ing play­ers, with Rain­bow RFC's 20-year-old cen­tre Ag­boola Sil­ver­thorne, promis­ing to shine in his po­si­tion. O'Con­nor, re­gard­ed by team coach Lar­ry Mendez as the fittest play­er for T&T, will lead the for­wards. Out­side-cen­tre Don Ro­jas and Fred­er­ick are among the most ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers and will start the match. Sev­er­al more ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers in­clud­ing Ja­mal Clark, have re­mained in the mix, to keep a bal­anced start­ing 15. Mendez has warned that the match has po­ten­tial to be "dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­tense", fol­low­ing weeks of vig­or­ous train­ing ses­sions. He said that the rou­tines con­duct­ed in the train­ing ses­sions for the past sev­er­al months should be ap­plied. Mendez said that sev­er­al of the play­ers have "shown up" and every one who was se­lect­ed has earned their call-up.

He added that the se­lec­tion has not been easy for the match. "The play­ers have not made the task of se­lect­ing a match-day 22 (squad) for Sat­ur­day's game with Bar­ba­dos easy," said Mendez. He, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that the ba­sis of se­lec­tion was strict­ly ad­hered to, with the most im­por­tant at­trib­ut­es be­ing con­sid­ered. A de­layed flight has seen the first batch of Bar­ba­dos play­ers ar­rive in T&T yes­ter­day morn­ing, and as many as ten mem­bers of the squad, par­tic­u­lar­ly its younger play­ers, are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T this morn­ing, mere hours be­fore kick-off. Speak­ing ahead of the match, Bar­ba­dos coach Den­nis Har­g­reaves joked that if any fur­ther de­lays oc­cur, "I might have to start the match." Both T&T and Bar­ba­dos will be rep­re­sent­ed by of­fi­cials in the as­sis­tant ref­er­ee and match com­mis­sion­er roles, An­drew John­son and Ja­son Brew­er, re­spec­tive­ly. The match ref­er­ee is Mex­i­co's Pablo Sep­tien. Al­win Et­wah from Guyana is the oth­er as­sis­tant ref­er­ee. NACRA's Amer­i­can pres­i­dent Bob Lath­am has al­so made the trip and will play the part of ju­di­cial of­fi­cer.

Bar­ba­dos Squad:

Dwight Forde (cap­tain), Neil Forde, Jeren Clark, Gregg Mose­ley-Clarke, Romeo May­ers, Romel Moore, Che Gor­ing, Kevyn Mur­rell, Keane Black­man, Che Springer, Daniel Ram­sey, Mario Hold­er, Steven Mi­lar, Stephan Atwell, Niko Blunt, Kofi Chase, Omar By­noe, Kevin Carter, Sean Ward, Troy Grant, Jae Bowen, Ra­moun Downes, Ken­neth Payne, Dario Stoute. Coach: Den­nis Har­g­reaves. Man­ag­er: Ken­neth Payne

T&T Squad:

Jonathan O'Con­nor (cap­tain), Adam Fred­er­icks (vice-cap­tain), John Hill, Miguel Lara, Ernest Wright, Ja­mal Clarke, Keis­hon Walk­er, Wayne Kel­ly, Row­ell Gor­don, Don Ro­jas, Joseph Quashie, Ja­son Clark, Ag­boola Sil­ver­thorne, James Phillip, Justin McLean, Fe­li­cian Guer­ra, Ja­son Joseph, Jesse Richards, Kurt Quashie, Tariq Cheekes, An­drew Tay­lor, Dar­ryl Scott. Coach: Lar­ry Mendez. Man­ag­er: Cur­tis Nero