T&T’s se­nior men’s foot­ballers were back on the train­ing pitch on Ash Wednes­day ahead of the March 20 In­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Wales at the Race­course Ground in Wrex­ham.

Head coach Den­nis Lawrence will have just about nine ses­sions at home again be­fore the squad as­sem­bles in Wrex­ham for the en­counter and the for­mer Ever­ton as­sis­tant coach is ex­pect­ed to name his fi­nal squad next week pri­or.

Wales head coach Ryan Gig­gs will name his squad in nine days and a BBC re­port stat­ed he is con­sid­er­ing call­ing up Rother­ham mid­field­er Will Vaulks for his first Wales ap­pear­ance.

Gig­gs was at the New York Sta­di­um on Sat­ur­day as Vaulks im­pressed in Rother­ham’s 3-2 win over Black­burn. Vaulks, 25, was born on the Wirral and played for Tran­mere and Work­ing­ton be­fore join­ing Falkirk in 2013. Gig­gs is no stranger in bring­ing in new play­ers out of the blue, with An­der­lecht cen­tre-back James Lawrence re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered to have Welsh roots.

One of the play­ers in Lawrence’s cur­rent pro­vi­sion­al squad is for­mer Dan­ish-based de­fend­er Radan­fah Abu Bakr who spoke about the im­por­tance of the up­com­ing fix­ture ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. Abu Bakr has played in the past two Gold Cups in 2013 and 2015.

"It’s al­ways good to be back, com­ing off a bit of a lay-off. It’s good to be back out on the pitch again and play­ing among the boys. It’s been very in­tense so far and very phys­i­cal," Abu Bakr said yes­ter­day.

"We have a big game to pre­pare for. It’s go­ing to be a mas­sive test for us and a big chal­lenge. We have been work­ing hard in the ses­sions try­ing to get up to speed phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly and tac­ti­cal­ly as well.

"We had the last cou­ple days off but we’ve been work­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ly and when we come to the ses­sions it’s a huge col­lec­tive ef­fort to get the right mind­set and tac­tics for the game com­ing up. It’s been very in­tense be­cause that’s how it’s go­ing to be game-day against top qual­i­ty op­po­si­tion. But we’ve been fo­cused on what he (Lawrence) has been try­ing to in­stil in us tac­ti­cal­ly and of course get­ting the right men­tal­i­ty when we play."

The for­mer Cale­do­nia AIA play­er stressed that the Wales en­counter is a crit­i­cal one ahead of a hec­tic pe­ri­od of ac­tiv­i­ties for the se­nior men’s team with the Gold Cup ap­proach­ing in June fol­lowed by the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League lat­er in the year.

"The most im­por­tant thing will be us to stay dis­ci­plined through­out the game. Quite a few of our boys are in off sea­son so that’s go­ing to be a bit of a chal­lenge which means we will have to stay very fo­cused dur­ing the game, very dis­ci­plined tac­ti­cal­ly and work to­geth­er as a team," said Abu Bakr, who un­der­stands the im­por­tance of stay­ing dis­ci­plined through­out the match be­ing key to a good re­sult against Gig­gs’ men.