Even with a sus­pen­sion, sev­er­al knocks and a fa­tigued team, head coach Randy Wal­drum re­mains con­fi­dent that T&T's se­nior women's foot­ballers can de­feat Mex­i­co in the Con­ca­caf Women's Cham­pi­onship third-place play­off to­day and qual­i­fy for next year's Fi­fa World Cup.T&T and Mex­i­co will at PPL Park, Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia, from 3 pm, be­fore USA and Cos­ta Ri­ca chal­lenge the fi­nal, from 6 pm.Wal­drum was clear­ly de­flat­ed af­ter T&T's (3-0) penal­ty shoot-out loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca in the first semi­fi­nal, on Fri­day night, but in turn­ing his at­ten­tion to Mex­i­co, he said the play­ers sim­ply need to play with the same spir­it and de­ter­mi­na­tion and al­so fol­low the game plan in or­der to get the job done.

Lau­ren Hutchin­son scored T&T's equal­is­ing goal in the 73rd minute off a head­er to can­cel Car­oli­na Vene­gas' 19th minute open­er for Cos­ta Ri­ca. De­spite a bar­rage from Cos­ta Ri­ca, T&T kept its op­po­nents at bay for the re­main­der of reg­u­la­tion time to force ex­tra time. No more goals were scored, but T&T lost a key play­er in the clos­ing mo­ments of ex­tra time, when cen­tre-back Rhea Bel­grave was sent off for a sec­ond book­able of­fense.As a re­sult, she will play no part against Mex­i­co, mak­ing Wal­drum's se­lec­tion process that much more chal­leng­ing when con­sid­er­ing his in­jury woes."In all hon­esty, I don't think even the play­ers would tell you, or I would tell you that we played par­tic­u­lar­ly well, be­cause I don't think we did. We didn't come out and fol­low the game plan of what we want­ed to do prop­er­ly. So, I thought it was a game that we nev­er got in­to a rhythm quite hon­est­ly, but hav­ing said that, we made some changes at half time, and I thought the sec­ond half was much bet­ter in terms of the pres­sure we put on them," he said, ad­dress­ing the tor­rid semi­fi­nal."I don't think we ever re­al­ly played cre­ative or at­trac­tive foot­ball. I think it was just a lot of heart and pride...It was hard af­ter the game, af­ter we put so much in­to it to lose the way we did in penal­ties. I think that's al­ways tough," he lament­ed.

But in turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the team's sec­ond of three chances to be­come the first team from the Caribbean to qual­i­fy for a Women's World Cup, Wal­drum said: "The chal­lenge to­day is to get them re­fo­cused and get them re-en­er­gised again and get them ready for Mex­i­co to­mor­row (to­day).""I think Mex­i­co has al­ways got the ex­pe­ri­ence and they've al­ways done well in Con­ca­caf, but this is a dif­fer­ent mex­i­co team...They are a bit younger in some po­si­tions with some new­er play­ers. I dont think it's the same team that it has been in the past; (not) quite as strong. I thought be­tween Cos­ta Ri­ca and Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca was the bet­ter of the two teams. You know, I think game that's still a win-able game."

Mex­i­co ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nal stage af­ter fin­ish­ing sec­ond in its group to Cos­ta Ri­ca. Cos­ta Ri­ca and Mex­i­co met in their first Group B match with the lat­ter tak­ing a 1-0 win. Mex­i­co then de­feat­ed Mar­tinique 10-0 and Ja­maica, 3-1."I think we can still get it done to­mor­row. I think its re­al­ly down to our ap­proach, if we men­tal­ly be­lieve it and men­tal­ly pre­pare to go bat­tle to­mor­row (to­day).""If we come out a bit flat and a bit slow as we did against Cos­ta Ri­ca, then its go­ing to be an­oth­er long day for us. So you know we have a bit of a chal­lenge. We have to re­place Rhea (Bel­grave) with the red card, in cen­tre back. You know we still have a bit of in­juries. We still won't be at full strength," he said.While the win­ner of the third-place play­off au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ad­vances to next year's World Cup in Cana­da, the fourth place fin­ish­er will be giv­en a third and fi­nal chance to qual­i­fy via an in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off with Ecuador, lat­er this year.