It’s re­al­ly gone be­yond a joke now and can on­ly be de­scribed as far­ci­cal. I know my dear read­ers you must be think­ing of so many things in our beloved Trinidad & To­ba­go, but I am re­fer­ring to none oth­er than the state of Trinidad & To­ba­go’s foot­ball.

It was bad enough with the men's squad but the kicks (no pun in­tend­ed) have now reached our tal­ent­ed women foot­ballers. I re­mem­ber for the first time a T&T women’s team gen­er­at­ing great in­ter­est at a packed Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on De­cem­ber 2, 2014, to wit­ness the in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off for the 24th and fi­nal place in the 2015 FI­FA Women’s World Cup vs Ecuador.

His­to­ry will show the T&T team lost the two-legged play­off by 1-0 - a sec­ond-half stop­page time win­ner from Mon­i­ca Quin­teros. Al­though the women lost the game, fans could not have fault­ed their tremen­dous ef­fort and things were look­ing bright for women’s foot­ball in T&T.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as with all foot­ball in this coun­try, the women’s game start­ed to get ne­glect­ed; play­ers start­ed to speak open­ly to the me­dia about the dis­con­tent and lack of re­spect for their tal­ent and a few of the star play­ers start­ed to take a back seat. T&T was nev­er able to scale the heights that were achieved in 2014.

Fast for­ward to 2021 and with the Women’s World Cup and Gold Cup qual­i­fiers on the hori­zon, James Thomas - a Welsh­man - was ap­point­ed in April 2021, and hope was re­vived. How­ev­er, Mr Thomas, to use lo­cal par­lance, ‘ups and gone’ on Oc­to­ber 6. That was bad enough as I am not sure what type of con­tract he had that he could just leave at a minute's no­tice but let’s leave that crazy busi­ness alone.

The com­e­dy show now goes in­to high gear as one week lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 13, Con­stan­tine Kon­stin, the na­tion­al men’s fut­sal coach is hired to lead the So­ca Princess­es. On first thought, I be­lieved the me­dia made a mis­take as isn’t fut­sal in­doors? Then, hav­ing been con­vinced ‘Con­nie’ got the job, I fig­ured he is a well-qual­i­fied coach both in­doors and out­doors so I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing what ad­di­tions and/or changes he would bring to T&T’s women’s game.

All of a sud­den, ‘Con­nie’ just like Thomas, ‘ups and gone’, too. But, this is where it gets rather in­ter­est­ing. One re­port says af­ter he took one ses­sion, the play­ers and women staff were ques­tion­ing his tac­tics dur­ing drills. It is al­leged he told the play­ers that they were con­trol­ling the ball bad­ly and they should be con­trol­ling the ball with the soles of their feet as they do in fut­sal. So one and all re­alised he may not be the man for the job.

What is even more con­fus­ing, the re­port not­ed that af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with ‘Con­nie’ con­cern­ing the de­mands of the women's in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow along­side per­son­al com­mit­ments and con­flicts that re­quire him to be in the USA at the end of Oc­to­ber, he mu­tu­al­ly agreed to step down.

So wait? Con­nie didn't know this be­fore he took up the ap­point­ment? The nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee nev­er dis­cussed the sched­ule with him and let him know what was de­mand­ed of him and the time frame? All of a sud­den, af­ter one prac­tice ses­sion, he re­alised he has per­son­al com­mit­ments?

Isn’t this an­oth­er com­e­dy show with T&T foot­ball? I am so sor­ry it has reached our women but the good news is, much like An­gus Eve with the men's team, I am hop­ing Ken­wyne Jones can mo­ti­vate the women and give them the con­fi­dence to pick them­selves up from this sor­did ex­pe­ri­ence and move for­ward.

Jones may not be ex­pe­ri­enced at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el but he has played at the high­est lev­el and will know what is re­quired to bring some sta­bil­i­ty and fo­cus to the team and I am sure he can bring the best out of the play­ers. With all the non­sense go­ing on off the field, I wish the team and him well for the two friend­ly match­es against Pana­ma - the first to­day at 4 pm and on Mon­day at the same time at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va.

Now, on to some T20 World Cup as the tour­na­ment has bowled off and we have al­ready seen one up­set as Scot­land de­feat­ed Bangladesh in the open­ing round of the qual­i­fiers and as the tour­na­ment gets in­to the group stages, I am sure we will see some more up­sets.

West In­dies, as we al­ready know, is in a tough group. Eng­land, Aus­tralia, South Africa, win­ner of group A (which could be Sri Lan­ka) and the run­ner up in group B (like­ly Bangladesh). But Eng­land, Aus­tralia and South Africa will all be a sig­nif­i­cant hand­ful. Much has been writ­ten and said about the se­lec­tion of this team but at this stage, fans will have no choice but to ful­ly sup­port the team and hope they can bring their A game to the tour­na­ment.

With re­spect to the team prospects, Aus­tralia is go­ing to take some beat­ing. Their bowl­ing at­tack is their strength. Pat Cum­mins is back and to­geth­er with Mitchell Starc, Mar­cus Stoi­nis and Josh Hazel­wood, they will un­set­tle the best of bats­men. In the bat­ting de­part­ment, any team with the likes of David Warn­er, Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Marsh can out­per­form any team on a giv­en day.

Eng­land will be miss­ing Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer and the big ques­tion is, can they cope with­out them? They will be missed but the Eng­lish will hope that the likes of Ja­son Roy, Jon­ny Bairstow and Jos But­tler come good with the bat and the all-rounders in Liam Liv­ing­stone and Moeen Ali com­pen­sate for the loss of Stokes.

South Africa showed us in the Caribbean that they are a fight­ing team led by Tem­ba Bavu­ma and they can­not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. How­ev­er, los­ing AB de Vil­liers and Faf du Plessis has se­ri­ous­ly weak­ened their bat­ting and too much will de­pend on Quin­ton de Kock and Aiden Markram.

On the oth­er hand, their bowl­ing at­tack is su­perb and they will be­lieve that if their bats­men can post 150-plus runs on the board, the likes of An­rich Nort­je, Kag­iso Raba­da, Lun­gi Ngi­di and un­ortho­dox left-arm spin­ner Tabraiz Sham­si can win the game for them.

Group 2 has In­dia, New Zealand and Pak­istan to bat­tle it out with each oth­er. In­dia and New Zealand are the favourites to ad­vance but Pak­istan, much like the West In­dies, are un­pre­dictable and if they bring their A game, they can cause an up­set how­ev­er the ques­tion re­mains, can West In­dies come out of their group? Of course, they can.

Eng­land and Aus­tralia will be the teams to beat and if the West In­dies can dis­play a stel­lar per­for­mance cap­i­tal­is­ing on the tal­ents of Evin Lewis, Lendl Sim­mons, Nicholas Pooran, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Ros­ton Chase, skip­per Kieron Pol­lard and An­dre Rus­sell, they can beat any­one. Dwayne Bra­vo is go­ing to be key with the ball in the death overs.

It’s ex­cit­ing times for the T20 World Cup. Like many of you, my heart is strong­ly sup­port­ing the West In­dies but if they do not play at op­ti­mum lev­el, my heart won’t be big enough for them to ad­vance to the se­mi-fi­nals.

Let’s keep our fin­gers crossed as we wish the West In­dies T20 team the very best of luck.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.