As the So­ca War­riors gears up to head in­to its first res­i­den­tial camp un­der new head coach Tom Saint­fi­et from to­mor­row at a Ho­tel in South where the play­ers will be based un­til their de­par­ture for Nicaragua, the play­ers have giv­en pos­i­tive feed­backs about the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the prepa­ra­tions over the last four days. A squad of 21 out of the 28 play­ers called com­menced train­ing last Thurs­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, as T&T looks to two up­com­ing friend­lies against Nicaragua on De­cem­ber 27 and 30.

Saint­fi­et, 43, has con­duct­ed four ses­sions so far and will over­see dou­ble ses­sions dai­ly from Tues­day as he gets his squad ready for the two match­es in Man­agua to be fol­lowed by the CFU Gold Cup play­off match­es at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um against Suri­name and Haiti on Jan­u­ary 4 and 8th. The team de­parts Port of Spain on Christ­mas evening.

Goal­keep­er Jan Michael Williams who has spent the last two ses­sions al­so work­ing with goal­keep­er coach Lukas Wo­j­ci­ak, said Saint­fi­et has made a strong im­pres­sion so far.

"It's been re­al­ly good so far. I think the coach ob­vi­ous­ly has the right ideas, he has all the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job and he has come in and im­posed him­self re­al­ly well on the group.

He has made his in­ten­tions clear which is to first­ly qual­i­fy for the Gold Cup and then the World Cup. I think he was well re­ceived by the play­ers and it augers well for the fu­ture of the foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He knows his stuff and he has re­al­ly got­ten off to a very good start," Williams said yes­ter­day af­ter train­ing at the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la.

Williams not­ed the im­por­tance of the team achiev­ing pos­i­tive re­sults and re­gain­ing con­fi­dence as it pre­pares to en­ter a busy 2017 cal­en­dar.

"Now is crunch time for us. We have to buck­le down as a team and we have to get back to win­ning ways. I think the coach knows his stuff and with that ex­tra dri­ve and mo­ti­va­tion we should do well. Al­though we may not have our full com­pli­ment of play­ers for Nicaragua, I think a lot of the lo­cal based play­ers are get­ting a chance to show that they de­serve a spot," the Cen­tral FC cus­to­di­an point­ed out.

Mex­i­can-based for­ward Shah­don Win­ches­ter said it was im­por­tant that the squad mem­bers fo­cus on play­ing their parts in help­ing the team achieve pos­i­tive re­sults in the match­es to come.

"So far things have been go­ing good with the ad­di­tion of the new play­ers and tech­ni­cal staff. I am pleased with the ses­sions so far and I think we can on­ly go up from here. I think he (Saint­fi­et) strong­ly be­lieves in his phi­los­o­phy which is a good thing. The four games are im­por­tant. The two games against Nicaragua are warm ups for us head­ing in­to the Suri­name and Haiti games. As coach said, he came here to do a job, and we as play­ers have to help him do that job," Win­ches­ter said.