I am cer­tain that many of you will agree that It’s great to see lo­cal foot­ball be­ing played once again. Over the last two years, we had to be con­tent watch­ing the Eng­lish Pre­mier League, La Liga, Se­rie A, etc on our tele­vi­sion sets and not know­ing when T&T’s clubs could take the field again to com­pete was dis­con­cert­ing.

When the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment an­nounced the open­ing of con­tact and team sports, many sports­men and women breathed a sigh of re­lief know­ing that they could com­pete again and for some ath­letes, it pre­sent­ed a wel­comed op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­fine their goals of per­haps one day play­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Even though the Min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment, both the Pro League and the Su­per League did not seem ready to restart their com­pe­ti­tions so it was left to the As­cen­sion Foot­ball League to fill the void and put to­geth­er a ten-team tour­na­ment com­pris­ing of clubs through­out the length and breadth of Trinidad to par­tic­i­pate and how well they have done thus far.

The games are played on week­ends start­ing on Fri­days with a dou­ble-head­er at Phase 2 La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground then on Sat­ur­days an­oth­er dou­ble-head­er at the Ari­ma Velo­drome and last­ly, on Sun­days a game at the St James Po­lice Bar­racks. The play­ers have on­ly been able to train for about 3 to 4 weeks but cred­it to them as the match­es have been very com­pet­i­tive (per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly short train­ing pe­ri­od) and the play­ers have been giv­ing heart and soul to the foot­ball field. The crowds that have con­verged, es­pe­cial­ly at the La Hor­quet­ta ground on a Fri­day evening, have been phe­nom­e­nal. The com­mu­ni­ty has come out in their hun­dreds to sup­port their lo­cal team - Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers - and they have been rich­ly re­ward­ed by see­ing them play hard com­pet­i­tive and con­struc­tive foot­ball.

It was easy to look at the play­ers and re­alise that their fit­ness lev­els were not at 100%, al­so some play­ers were not quite used to the style of play of the teams but one could not ques­tion the ef­fort of all play­ers thus far. I can see the teams im­prov­ing and play­ing a bet­ter brand of foot­ball in the next cou­ple of weeks when their fit­ness lev­els im­prove and when they un­der­stand ex­act­ly the style of play that is re­quired by their re­spec­tive coach­es.

In­deed, it cer­tain­ly has been a pro­duc­tive start to the re­sump­tion of foot­ball and I can see quite a few play­ers knock­ing on the door of coach An­gus Eve and ba­si­cal­ly say­ing, “hey coach, do you re­mem­ber me?” which au­gurs ex­treme­ly well for foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

An­oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion that has held its hand up and is sup­port­ing foot­ball in Trinidad and al­so in the sis­ter isle is Tiger Tanks. Their com­pe­ti­tion, Tiger Tanks Un­der-20 Men’s In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball Tour­na­ment, kicked off last week­end in To­ba­go and the ac­tion con­tin­ues this week­end with five match­es in Trinidad and two in To­ba­go. As men­tioned, our young­sters have not had com­pet­i­tive foot­ball for two years so it was good to see them back on the field of play. Yes, they will take a long while to ad­just to the con­di­tions and style of play of their teams, but many of these young­sters were about to break in­to their school’s first team in 2020 and so have missed 2 crit­i­cal years of their de­vel­op­ment from 16 to 18 years of age. Most, if not all of them, have now left sec­ondary school and would have had to slot in­to these Un­der-20 teams with a style of play that is new to many of them as they would have come from Un­der-16 school tour­na­ments. Hope­ful­ly, par­ents, friends and club sup­port­ers would come out to sup­port these young­sters as they are the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s foot­ball in 4 to 5 years’ time they should be push­ing to be fix­tures on the na­tion­al team.

With ref­er­ence to the na­tion­al team, the So­ca War­riors have won the three-team tour­na­ment played at the Hase­ly Craw­ford sta­di­um against a very or­di­nary Bar­ba­dos team and a tougher Guyana team. I must say the fans who came out for the first time in 2 years to wit­ness the War­riors play live seemed dis­ap­point­ed that they did not ex­e­cute a vic­to­ry against the Gold­en Jaguars. There is no doubt on pa­per that the War­riors are a bet­ter unit so coach An­gus Eve would have been equal­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the chances cre­at­ed were not put away.

De­spite the set­back against Guyana, there is a lot to look for­ward to with the na­tion­al team. They are in­volved in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League in League B / Group C along­side Nicaragua, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and the Ba­hamas. It is im­per­a­tive to do well in this tour­na­ment as win­ning the group will re­sult in pro­mo­tion to League A (along with Mex­i­co, USA, etc.) and au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2023 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. The in­cen­tives are there for the So­ca War­riors and coach Eve, who now has in ad­di­tion to the for­eign-based play­ers, lo­cal ones com­pet­ing week in and week out to choose from so he should be able to pick his best squad bar­ring in­juries and/or club com­mit­ments.

Last but by no means least, the women So­ca War­riors take on Turks and Caicos and Guyana on April 9th and April 12th re­spec­tive­ly in the Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers. Af­ter vic­to­ries in two pre­vi­ous qual­i­fy­ing games coach, Ken­wyne Jones seems qui­et­ly con­fi­dent that his team can pull off two more vic­to­ries. He in­di­cat­ed that he has the ma­jor­i­ty of his squad which sug­gests to me that he has the squad he would have want­ed to be able to be vic­to­ri­ous. In fact, Jones has open­ly said he ex­pects them to win both match­es. Turks and Caicos should be a com­fort­able vic­to­ry for them, es­pe­cial­ly when one con­sid­ers the fact that they have con­ced­ed a whop­ping 26 goals thus far in their group match­es; 7 against Guyana and 19 (yes, the re­sult was 19-0) against Nicaragua. On the oth­er hand, Guyana is un­beat­en hav­ing won 4-0 and 7-0 against Do­mini­ca and Turks and Caicos re­spec­tive­ly.

I must say, I have been im­pressed with the job Jones is do­ing. He seems fo­cused on the job at hand, he is a no-non­sense in­di­vid­ual, com­mit­ted, se­ri­ous and ex­pects noth­ing but 100% from his charges. He has the play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence from his pro­fes­sion­al days to turn things around when they are not go­ing ac­cord­ing to plan. How­ev­er, he is still learn­ing the trade as a na­tion­al coach but like him, I be­lieve the Women So­ca War­riors will be vic­to­ri­ous in the two World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing games. Good luck to them!

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