An­drew Gioan­net­ti

"The mood has been very good. The staff is a very good one and the play­ers ab­solute­ly know what is at stake and are em­brac­ing the chal­lenge."

Randy Wal­drum, head coach of T&T's se­nior women's team said he be­lieves his team is phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly pre­pared for to­mor­row's first leg Fi­fa Women's World Cup in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off against Ecuador.

T&T will face Ecuador from 2 pm (4 pm TT time) and will be seek­ing a pos­i­tive re­sult ahead of the De­cem­ber 2 re­turn leg, at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain, which will ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide whether a fourth Con­ca­caf (North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean) team or a third Com­nebol (South Amer­i­ca) team will qual­i­fy for next year's World Cup in Cana­da.

Nei­ther Ecuador nor T&T have ever qual­i­fied for a Fi­fa Women's World Cup. In fact, no Caribbean na­tion has ever qual­i­fied for a Women's World Cup.

These next three weeks serve as the "Women So­ca War­riors'" best op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

"The abil­i­ty to be to­geth­er in our prepa­ra­tions as a team is huge for us. I think every­one is just anx­ious for the game to get here," Wal­drum added in an in­ter­view with the Guardian.

The for­mer Un­der-17 na­tion­al women's team coach said sup­port team, which com­pris­es a con­di­tion­ing coach, a team doc­tor, a train­er, a mas­sage ther­a­pist, along with a coach­ing and man­age­ment staff have all pooled their strengths to­geth­er to have the women pre­pared for per­haps their biggest chal­lenge.

"That is, deal­ing with the al­ti­tude of Quito, the high­est of­fi­cial cap­i­tal in the world. He said he was grate­ful for the team's chance to train at Mex­i­can na­tion­al team train­ing cen­tre un­til Wednes­day.

Dur­ing their stay, the women's team took played a warm up match against an acad­e­my team and se­cured a 6-0 win via goals from Tasha St Louis, new ad­di­tion Can­dice Ed­wards, Ken­nya Cord­ner, Der­nelle Mas­call (one each) and a dou­ble from Ah­keela Mol­lon.

The team left Mex­i­co and ar­rived in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a city at sea lev­el, on Wednes­day and have par­tic­i­pat­ed in one train­ing ses­sion.

To­day, they will ar­rive in Quito. The Es­ta­dio Ol�mpi­co Atahual­pa (ca­pac­i­ty 40,948), with an el­e­va­tion of 2,782m, the venue for the match has played some part in Ecuador's undis­put­ed home ad­van­tage in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

While the ma­jor­i­ty of play­ers have pre­pared for the chal­lenge in Mex­i­co, a num­ber of col­lege-based play­ers were un­able to do so due to their school re­stric­tions. Some re­joined the team in Guayaquil yes­ter­day and some will ar­rive to­day, be­fore de­part­ing for Quito.

In ex­plain­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind this, Wal­drum said: "The sci­ence tells us that if play­ers can­not train in al­ti­tude, then the best way to cope with it is to come in 48-66 hours be­fore the game and play close to time of ar­rival. I am not too ter­ri­bly con­cerned about it as I think we have cov­ered all bases on prepar­ing for it the best way we could with the time we had to do so."

Quot­ed in a me­dia re­lease from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) is­sued yes­ter­day T&T for­ward Der­nelle Mas­call said she and her team­mates are keep­ing fo­cused for to­mor­row's en­counter.

"We're all keep­ing our minds fo­cused on go­ing in­to Sat­ur­day's match and keep­ing it to­geth­er and try­ing to put on a strong per­for­mance," Mas­call said. "We've had a re­al­ly good few days in the build up to the match. The camp in Mex­i­co served its pur­pose and now we're just look­ing ahead to the game to en­sure we are ready as can be for Sat­ur­day."