Nigel Si­mon

Wood­brook-based T&T Pro League club, Ma Pau con­tin­ued its dri­ve to strength­en its squad for the up­com­ing sea­son with the sign­ings of for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er, Cyd Gray and ex-Un­der-23 cap­tain Shane Calderon. Mak­ing the dis­clo­sure was for­mer na­tion­al play­er and past Cli­co San Juan Jabloteh play­er/as­sis­tant coach, An­gus Eve, who is the team's Youth De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer. Speak­ing on the sign­ing of Calderon, Eve said he was very hap­py to add an­oth­er great young tal­ent.

"Shane has great pace and a lot of skill and along with Michael Mc Comie, the club's di­rec­tor of foot­ball we will be hop­ing to put it in­to good use," he said. The 24-year-old Calderon, who was born in Ger­many, pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed spells in the Pro League with bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic and W Con­nec­tion be­fore play­ing last sea­son with East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion club, Val­trin Unit­ed.

"We are build­ing a team for the fu­ture," said Eve. "Calderon is a tal­ent­ed young play­er. I think he did lost his way a bit in the past, but he will prove him­self at Ma Pau. We've watched his progress at Val­trin last sea­son. He al­so trained with us on a few oc­ca­sions last sea­son but we nev­er signed him be­cause our ros­ter didn't al­low it. But he is with us now and we think that at Ma Pau, he will be re­fo­cused." With re­gards to the ex­pe­ri­enced Gray, who joins the club af­ter his pre­vi­ous em­ploy­ers, Unit­ed Petrotrin opt­ed out of this year's com­pe­ti­tion due to fi­nan­cial rea­sons, Eve said he will add more sta­bil­i­ty to the de­fence. "When we saw that Petrotrin was not go­ing to be part of the League again, I im­me­di­ate­ly thought of Cyd Gray," said Eve, who played along­side the hard tack­ling de­fend­er both at the na­tion­al lev­el at San Juan Jabloteh.

"I im­me­di­ate­ly spoke with Mike (Michael Mc­Comie) be­cause Gray, de­spite his age of 36 has a lot to of­fer," Eve con­tin­ued.

"He un­der­stands the role he will be play­ing with the club and with the likes of Keyeno Thomas, Seon Pow­ers and young­sters like Cur­tis Gon­za­les and Mekeil Williams in the back-line it will pro­vide more cov­er for the team." This will be the fourth club in the Pro League for Cyd Gray af­ter suc­cess­ful spells at Joe Pub­lic (with Mc Comie) and Jabloteh (with Eve), be­fore his one-year spell with Petrotrin. The oth­er play­ers al­ready signed dur­ing the off-sea­son by Ma Pau in­cludes the for­mer Jabloteh quar­tet of Lester Corn Curls Pelti­er, De­von Jamer­son, El­ton John and Joel Rus­sell along with the Joe Pub­lic trio of Thomas, Pow­ers and Colom­bian goal­keep­er, Ale­jan­dro Figueroa. For­mer Jabloteh duo, and na­tion­al Un­der-20 play­ers, Kelvin Moli­no, and Mekiel Williams have al­so signed for the Casi­no Boys af­ter be­ing on-loan from Jabloteh last year.

De­spite hav­ing signed 11 play­ers so far, Eve said that the club was still in the mar­ket for one play­er. Eve was al­so hap­py to an­nounce that the club had man­aged in­flu­ence for­mer na­tion­al team phys­io­ther­a­pist, David Cum­ber­batch to quit his post at Joe Pub­lic and join Ma Pau tech­ni­cal staff where he will work along­side Earl Joseph. "Cum­ber­batch is one of the top phys­i­cal train­er/phys­io­ther­a­pist in T&T," said Eve. "He did well with Joe Pub­lic last sea­son. We think our staff need­ed to be strength­ened ahead of the sea­son. It shows the type of am­bi­tion we have this sea­son and where we are go­ing to be." Ma Pau be­gin its pre-sea­son on Feb­ru­ary 1 at home fol­lowed by tours to Pana­ma and Colom­bia in March which is cur­rent­ly be­ing for­malised by Michael Mc­Comie.