Nigel Si­mon

Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick has been re-ap­point­ed coach of Dig­i­cel Pro League club Cli­co San Juan Jabloteh af­ter be­ing out of the post for the past sea­son. Fen­wick, who with­held his ser­vices from the club for the 2009 cam­paign over salary dis­pute, was hand­ed the reins of the team for the third time on Thurs­day, af­ter set­tling le­gal mat­ters with the club. This comes af­ter the sack­ing of first year coach, St Lu­cian Earl Jean, his as­sis­tant Travis Mul­raine and man­ag­er, Wes­ley Webb fol­low­ing a tro­phy­less sea­son by the San Juan-based club.

Reached for com­ment, Fen­wick said, "As you are aware I was in­volved in some le­gal mat­ters with the club at the start of the year over my non-pay­ment of salaries. "But that is­sue has been re­solved and I have signed a new con­tract with the club. I'm now look­ing for­ward to tak­ing the club back to the top of lo­cal foot­ball." At the start of the 2009 sea­son, Jabloteh was hit hard with a num­ber of key se­nior play­ers de­par­tur­ing to oth­er clubs af­ter the fi­nan­cial crum­bling of main in­vestors Cli­co.

Fen­wick's in­volve­ment with the team al­so came to an end be­fore the sea­son be­gan as the club had dif­fi­cul­ties in sourc­ing the funds to cov­er his salary, which in the past was done by Cli­co. A de­ci­sion was then tak­en to hand the team over to his for­mer as­sis­tant, St Lu­cian Earl Jean. Un­der the guid­ance of Jean, Jabloteh start­ed the sea­son with a third place fin­ish in the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­onship to qual­i­fy for the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League where they even­tu­al­ly reached the group stages but failed to muster a win.

Jabloteh had a dis­ap­point­ing cam­paign dur­ing the Dig­i­cel Pro League, as it failed to re­tain the three tro­phies won un­der Fen­wick the pre­vi­ous sea­son. In 2008, Fen­wick cap­tured the Pro League, "Big Six" and Toy­ota Clas­sic ti­tles. The Eng­lish­man, a for­mer coach of Crys­tal Palace, Northamp­ton and Portsmouth was al­so named Pro League "Coach of the Year" and the club, "Team of the Year" af­ter its most suc­cess­ful sea­son ever in the Pro League.

How­ev­er, led by Jean, Jabloteh had to set­tle for sec­ond spot in the Pro League, "Big Six" and Toy­ota Clas­sic com­pe­ti­tions, all won by ri­vals bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic. Jabloteh was al­so beat­en semi­fi­nal­ist in both the Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield and First Cit­i­zens Cup com­pe­ti­tion while it was oust­ed in the round-of-16 T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA com­pe­ti­tion, which it won in 2005 with Fen­wick. Look­ing ahead to 2010, Fen­wick, who led the club to three Pro­League ti­tles–in­clud­ing back-to-back tri­umphs in 2007 and 2008–said he plans to build a very strong team.

"I have been around foot­ball in T&T over the last year keep­ing my eyes on play­ers in the Pro League and even in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League," said Fen­wick. "I am look­ing to re­cruit some young qual­i­ty play­ers from the school sys­tem and al­so add some play­ers from oth­er clubs who will be out of con­tract. "In ad­di­tion, I'm al­so on the look­out for two or three coach­es to join my new staff and any in­ter­est­ed per­son can call the club of­fice at 676-3463/3462.