For­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al and Eu­rope-based at­tack­er Collin Samuel has joined the ros­ter of North East Stars, where he will serve as play­er/coach for the re­main­der of the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League sea­son.

The 34-year-old, 2006 World Cup play­er re­cent­ly joined the San­gre Grande club as as­sis­tant coach to Ross Rus­sell, who took charge in De­cem­ber.But Rus­sell be­lieves the for­mer Dundee Unit­ed at­tack­er, who al­so had stints with oth­er Scot­tish clubs Falkirk, St John­stone, Ar­broath, East Fife and Sauchie, has a lot more to of­fer.

"It's just for him to get back his habit [on the field of play]," said Rus­sell, a two-time Pro League win­ning coach at De­fence Force.

"So far he (Samuel) is do­ing well in train­ing and he is quite ex­cit­ed to re­turn to play­ing.

"But one thing that's cer­tain, he has a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence to share with the play­ers around him. He had al­ready start­ed do­ing it as as­sis­tant coach and be­ing on the field of play can be an­oth­er plus."

Samuel, who had a brief stint with Guaya Unit­ed in the Su­per League in 2015, last com­pet­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Trinidad in 2002 with San Juan Jabloteh–the club he served for just un­der two sea­sons–be­fore mov­ing to Falkirk for the start of his in­ter­na­tion­al ad­ven­ture which in­clud­ed stints at Toron­to FC and Eng­land's Lu­ton Town.

Rus­sell, who plans to bol­ster his squad dur­ing the mid-sea­son trans­fer win­dow (Jan­u­ary 29-Feb­ru­ary 26), ex­plained, "We def­i­nite­ly have the qual­i­ty [in play­ers] but we lack num­bers and the right at­ti­tude. What we have been try­ing to work on, is the dis­ci­pline to work hard all the time."

North East Stars are win­less in their last four Dig­i­cel Pro League games, in­clud­ing a 7�0 drub­bing by W Con­nec­tion in their last out­ing.Rus­sell's side sits fifth on the stand­ings with 22 points and will wel­come lead­ers De­fence Force (32 points) from 3.30 pm on Sun­day at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um.

Mean­while, W Con­nec­tion wants to ex­tend league form in­to the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League qual­i­fy­ing. "The aim is to con­tin­ue our good run," W Con­nec­tion as­sis­tant coach Earl Jean said this week. "We have to keep fo­cus. We have the Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship com­ing up al­so, and we want to want to do well and qual­i­fy for the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League again.

"This pe­ri­od is very cru­cial for us and it's al­so im­por­tant to bring in one or two play­ers in the trans­fer win­dow to give the ex­tra push."

Cen­tral FC and W Con­nec­tion, last sea­son's Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club cham­pi­ons and run­ners-up, re­spec­tive­ly, will tack­le Caribbean ri­vals lat­er this month (Feb­ru­ary 24-28) in the pre­lim­i­nary round of the 2016 edi­tion.

Cen­tral must trav­el to Ja­maica for Group Three ac­tion, where they will meet host club and last sea­son's third place fin­ish­ers, Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed, and Schol­ars In­ter­na­tion­al SC (Cay­man Is­lands) at the Mon­tego Bay Sports Com­plex, Mon­tego Bay.

While fel­low Pro League out­fit and mul­ti­ple-time for­mer Caribbean cham­pi­ons, W Con­nec­tion, will host Group One in Trinidad at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um where they will wel­come Club Sportif Moulien (Guade­loupe), In­ter Mo­en­go­tapoe (Suri­name) and Atleti­co San Cristo­bal (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic).