Trinidad and To­ba­go women So­ca War­riors got their 2022 Con­ca­caf World Cham­pi­onship, which serves as a qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion for the 2023 FI­FA Women’s World Cup and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games cam­paign off to a good start with three points against Cen­tral Amer­i­can op­po­nents Nicaragua at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day.

Head coach Ken­wyne Jones said af­ter the game that his team pre­pared well ahead of the 3 pm kick­off which was rough for both teams as wa­ter breaks had to be used dur­ing the en­counter.

Jones, a for­mer na­tion­al se­nior and ju­nior team cap­tain, whose aim is to lift the stan­dard of the game in the coun­try and of course car­ry the team to their first-ever World Cup showed great signs from kick-off.

Play­ing in group F it was ev­i­dent that T&T was more or­ga­nized and set­tled first as they bossed the pos­ses­sion from ear­ly on. It didn't take long for the dead­lock to be bro­ken, the 17th minute to be ex­act when To­ba­go-born Asha James who plays for Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty col­lect­ed the pass from Lau­ryn Hutchin­son, brushed aside her de­fend­er got in­to the box and calm­ly slot­ted home in front of the home fans who were de­light­ed to be back out watch­ing live foot­ball again.

"That sort of dis­play was ev­i­dence of what the head coach made men­tion of af­ter the match say­ing that he was not wor­ried about this op­po­si­tion once the women did what they worked on in train­ing they would get the job done," said Jones asked about how the team per­formed.

The spec­ta­tors at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um was once again jump­ing out of their seats in the 29th minute when Rhea Bel­grave con­vert­ed a Karyn Forbes cross for the 2-0 lead.

How­ev­er, ag­o­niz­ing­ly, the as­sis­tant ref­er­ee's flag was raised to cur­tail all cel­e­bra­tions be­fore the first wa­ter break.

Just as a per­fect half in the eyes of the coach­ing staff and spec­ta­tors neared its end in the 44th minute T&T was down to 10-man when mid­field­er Kadie John­son re­ceived her sec­ond yel­low from ref­er­ee Lizzet Gar­cia whose de­ci­sion met the irate of the fans as she gave the march­ing or­der.

At this point of the match, on­ly T&T play­ers were cau­tioned (yel­low card­ed) while there were more than a hand­ful of ques­tion­able chal­lenges that went un­pun­ished when it seemed that the vis­i­tors were in the wrong.

When Jones was asked about the of­fi­ci­at­ing of the match he said: "I will not com­ment on the ref­er­ee, any­one who watched the game and was in the stands, it was plain to see what took place out there so I will not make a per­son­al com­ment on the ref­er­ee's per­for­mance."

The sec­ond half kicked off with T&T chang­ing for­ma­tion to ac­com­mo­date the man ad­van­tage the vis­i­tors had, thus Nicaragua had more pos­ses­sion and were the ag­gres­sors. That didn't last for long as the game's sec­ond goal came in the 64th minute and it was the cap­tain Karyn Forbes who de­serv­ing­ly got her just re­ward for all the slav­ing she did all day long. Asha James' cor­ner caused all sorts of con­fu­sion in the box in which fel­low To­bag­on­ian Forbes poked it home to ig­nite a roar from the stands as Betha­nia Abur­to was beat­en once again.

T&T's num­ber one keep­er Kimi­ka Forbes had to be sub­sti­tut­ed late in the match as she ag­gra­vat­ed a foot in­jury giv­ing Tene­sha Palmer some valu­able min­utes be­tween the up­right.

How­ev­er, she was not at fault when Yesse­nia Flo­res ex­pert­ly and im­pres­sive­ly got a con­so­la­tion for the vis­i­tors in the dy­ing sec­onds of in­jury time for the 2-1 fi­nal. Lis­beth Moreno ball diceted the de­fence for Palmer to drib­ble her way around the re­main­ing cen­tral de­fend­ers and dared to use them out­side of her right boot to add the ic­ing on the cake. With three points in the bag, Jones not­ed that the ladies will en­joy the vic­to­ry for just about 25 min­utes at the ho­tel be­fore they re­fo­cus on the next task at hand Do­mini­ca on Sun­day. The team will de­part on Fri­day for Guyana.