T&T's se­nior men's team will be look­ing to turn the re­sult over to their favour when they face off with Pana­ma in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Es­ta­dio Rom­mel Fer­nan­dez at 8.30 pm (9.30pm TT time) to­day.

Back in 2000, when both teams met at the CON­CA­CAF semi­fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion, T&T were easy 6�0 win­ners at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, with Dwight Yorke lead­ing the way with a hat-trick.

Since then the two teams have met 11 times with T&T win­ning five, Pana­ma four and two be­ing drawn. But Pana­ma have won four out of the last six out­ings, in­clud­ing the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup quar­ter­fi­nal clash in June and a friend­ly in Cou­va in March.

T&T skip­per Ken­wyne Jones be­lieves T&T are ca­pa­ble of turn­ing around their for­tunes as it re­lates to re­sults with Pana­ma.

"I think the present team has come a long way over the past two years as was ev­i­dent at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and the last friend­ly with Mex­i­co. I was part of the team that beat them here in 2005 but his­to­ry will show that the re­sults didn't look too good for us since then," said Jones. "Things are a bit dif­fer­ent now, the team is per­form­ing at a high­er lev­el and we will be look­ing to re­verse the re­sults."

Pana­ma is in the same group with Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica and Haiti for the CON­CA­CAF semi­fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion. And from all re­ports in the press in Pana­ma, the Pana­ma­ni­ans have every in­ten­tion of warm­ing up with a vic­to­ry over the "So­ca War­riors".

"Of course, we play to win and want to be as strong as we can. The op­po­nents are al­so prepar­ing for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion so both teams will be try­ing to play a good game and to get a good re­sult be­fore the qual­i­fiers," Pana­ma head coach Her­nan Gomez.

His op­po­site num­ber, Stephen Hart, will be keen to see how his play­ers re­spond to play­ing away from home against a sol­id Cen­tral Amer­i­can op­po­nent.

"The mood is good at the mo­ment. This game is very im­por­tant be­cause in the two pre­vi­ous games, at home we played them with a large­ly lo­cal squad and then at the Gold Cup, we tied and went to penal­ties and we lost.

"But the most im­por­tant thing right now with our games is how we ap­proach the game and how we play. It's not so much about the op­po­si­tion but about get­ting things right with­in our team struc­ture," Hart said yes­ter­day, af­ter an ear­ly morn­ing train­ing ses­sion at the Mara­cana Sta­di­um.

With Jones and Shel­don Bateau back in­to the squad, Hart will look­ing to see how the play­ers adapt to the chal­lenge.

"Those play­ers com­ing back gives us a dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ic. Of course we missed out on Cato and Pelti­er. But with the ones re­turn­ing, it al­lows them to reac­quaint them­selves with what we have been do­ing and hope­ful­ly in the two games every­body will get a run in,"said Hart.

Russ­ian-based de­fend­er Bateau said he has al­ready set­tled back in­to the team, af­ter miss­ing the draw with Mex­i­co last month and al­so com­ing off his long trav­el from Moscow to Pana­ma City.

"We've had some good ses­sions. The team is com­ing along pret­ty well and there is com­pe­ti­tion for places in the team. I think the team is ready for a good show­ing to­mor­row. Per­son­al­ly I feel good. I've been around these play­ers for some time now so it's just a mat­ter of us work­ing to­geth­er, con­tin­u­ing to build that chem­istry and get­ting on with the task be­fore us." Bateau said.

Hart was ex­pect­ed to con­duct a one-hour ses­sion at the match venue yes­ter­day from 8 pm af­ter a sched­uled prac­tice the pre­vi­ous evening had to be put off due to heavy rain­fall and light­ning. To­day's game is card­ed to be aired live on Flow Chan­nel 99.