Dr Ter­rence Bab­wah, the for­mer So­ca War­riors doc­tor who re-signed af­ter re­veal­ing that his ad­vice was be­ing ig­nored by for­mer na­tion­al coach Stephen Hart, is among per­sons be­ing strong­ly con­sid­ered for the med­ical po­si­tions on the T&T foot­ball tech­ni­cal staff team, as new coach Tom Saint­fi­et pre­pares to se­lect his team ahead of two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es this month, the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup qual­i­fiers in Jan­u­ary and the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers in March.

Yes­ter­day, Saint­fi­et said he was not rul­ing out peo­ple who served on the staff be­fore as he wants the best team of pro­fes­sion­als to move ahead with the task at hand.

The T&T team will be at­tempt­ing to re­bound from two dis­ap­point­ing starts at the hexag­o­nal stage, go­ing down to Cos­ta Ri­ca 2-1 at home and lat­er Hon­duras 3-1 in San Pe­dro Su­la, which has left them sec­ond from bot­tom on the six-na­tion stand­ing with no points.

The Trinidad Guardian un­der­stands from a source close to the lat­est de­vel­op­ment that Dr Bab­wah is the lead­ing con­tender for the po­si­tion as team doc­tor, while medic Dave Isaac who al­so re-signed along with Dr Bab­wah back in No­vem­ber for sim­i­lar rea­sons, will al­so be con­sid­ered by the Bel­gian coach. They pair along with Dr Mario John and Dr Is­rael Dowlat, both of whom served on dif­fer­ent na­tion­al teams dur­ing the past six years are al­so in the same con­ver­sa­tion.

Forty-three year-old Saint­fi­et got the nod for the T&T coach­ing job, fol­low­ing the sack­ing of Hart and was ex­pect­ed to se­lect his staff, which in­cludes both tech­ni­cal and med­ical, by Tues­day.

He said he will be look­ing at lo­cals who are qual­i­fied and can make a con­tri­bu­tion to the team, in­clud­ing Hut­son Charles and Derek King, who both re­signed in the wake of Hart's sack­ing, as well as oth­er pro­fes­sion­als in the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty, to fill the po­si­tions of as­sis­tant coach­es.

Last night Saint­fi­et was sched­uled to meet with Cen­tral FC man­ag­er Brent San­cho and W Con­nec­tion coach Stu­art Charles-Fevri­er and said he will meet with oth­er club coach­es, man­agers and own­ers over the com­ing week as he at­tempts to put to­geth­er a staff and team for two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es be­tween 21-27 this month at the sta­di­um.

"I pre­fer to have lo­cal peo­ple on the staff as they will be aware of the cul­ture and will know the play­ers bet­ter than I do. I can­not look at all the play­ers in such a short space of time. When they are cho­sen I will have a look at them and de­cide who is picked on the na­tion­al team" Saint­fi­et said.

Ac­cord­ing to Saint­fi­et: "Based on what I have seen about T&T foot­ball, the play­ers are very skill­ful and quick which will be an as­set to use in for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy when they next play." He added: "It is not al­ways what you do right on the field, but some­times the mi­nor slip-ups that teams can pun­ish you for and win match­es."

Saint­fi­et be­lieves that T&T needs to get back to win­ning ways to re­gain its con­fi­dence, say­ing he will find ways to im­prove team per­for­mance and get re­sults. He dis­missed con­cerns of feel­ing pres­sured from his two-game man­date, say­ing he per­forms bet­ter un­der pres­sure.

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams is cur­rent­ly in Mi­a­mi at­tempt­ing to fi­nal­ize match­es with ei­ther Ja­maica, Cu­ba or Nicaragua.

WAL­TER AL­IBEY