Mid­field­er Asha James re­turned to the T&T women’s team ahead of Mon­day’s open­ing World Cup Qual­i­fi­er against Bar­ba­dos in Kens­ing­ton Oval at 4pm.

James served a sus­pen­sion af­ter a Face­book post about a col­league in Oc­to­ber land­ed her in hot wa­ter; how­ev­er, coach Dami­an Brig­gs em­braced the play­er back in­to the fold. She joined a num­ber of fa­mil­iar names in a squad of 23 to face the Bar­ba­di­ans, such as Maria-Frances Ser­rant, Chris­sy Mitchell, Ke­dia John­son, Vic­to­ria Swift, and in­flu­en­tial strik­er Ken­nya ‘Ya Ya’ Cord­ner.

Yes­ter­day, Coach Brig­gs told the me­dia via a press brief­ing that he is con­fi­dent his charges can come away with a win or at least a point from Bridgetown. The play­ers will wing out for Bar­ba­dos to­day, but ac­cord­ing to Brig­gs, his play­ers have not on­ly been work­ing hard, but they all be­lieve they can come away with a win.

“We feel re­al­ly con­fi­dent about go­ing in­to the game in terms of the way our prepa­ra­tion has been go­ing. I think all the ladies have re­al­ly set­tled down and start­ed to work re­al­ly hard and put their all in­to it. Again, with the train­ing camp out of the way, the game against Ja­maica gave us a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of where we were, some of the changes that need­ed to be made, and some of the adap­ta­tions that need­ed to be made.”

“We got our heads down, we got our plans, you know, the staff got to­geth­er as well and cre­at­ed dif­fer­ent plans and spoke to the ladies, and, yeah, I think we’re in and ready to go. The word we use is ‘buzzing’ at the mo­ment; every­one’s buzzing. I think every­one’s got that be­lief now. Every­one’s got that be­lief that we can ac­tu­al­ly go there and come away with some­thing, come away with three points or a min­i­mum of one, but they’re all buzzing about that and quite con­fi­dent that we can go there and get three points. We’re not go­ing to un­der­es­ti­mate Bar­ba­dos, be­cause we know just as we’ve been train­ing hard, they’ve been train­ing hard, but we’re go­ing there with that self-be­lief in what we’ve put to­geth­er so far with­in the train­ing pe­ri­od that we have.”

“We’ve seen the pro­gres­sion from our er­rors in train­ing or in games, things we learn from (2:30), so we’re quite pos­i­tive and quite up­beat that we could ac­tu­al­ly come away with some­thing (2:34) from Bar­ba­dos.”

The T&T women re­ceived a bap­tism of fire in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter with Ja­maica last month, go­ing down 4-1. This time, they face a Bar­ba­di­an team that works hard and tries to play foot­ball. Like the T&T team, the Bar­ba­di­ans have been boost­ed by a few for­eign-based play­ers, which makes them very hard to break down at times due to the com­pact­ness of their de­fen­sive struc­ture.

Brig­gs said he is not pre­pared to un­der­es­ti­mate them go­ing in­to the match. The T&T team it­self has been a bal­anced one, with Brig­gs ex­tend­ing his re­cruit­ing reach to the Unit­ed States and oth­er parts of the globe. “The team is a blend. I would go al­most 50-50, a blend of play­ers that are play­ing abroad and play­ers that are play­ing here, and the play­ers will tell you; I’m of the be­lief the best play­ers will play. The best lo­cal play­ers who we be­lieve are there to play will play, and the best play­ers who come from abroad will play, and it’s about just try­ing to get that sort of co­he­sion be­tween the ones who play abroad when they come in and how well they blend in with some of the oth­ers who have been in train­ing.”

“So, there’s Ar­i­an­na Bo­nio, Gab­by Williams, Si­mone Eligon, the goal­keep­er, Akela Wal­cott, and Liana Hinds. Every­one we’ve seen, they’ve come in, and they’ve trained, and they’ve had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play in some of the prac­tice games we’ve played. And yeah, they’re ex­cit­ed about what they do. I think the thing with them, as well, and all the play­ers who’ve come from abroad, is the hon­esty that they bring in terms of how they work, along with the lo­cal ones that have tak­en on board the way we want to play, and they un­der­stood how tough it’s go­ing to be in terms of the phys­i­cal out­put as well.”

“They’ve all put their heads down and look for­ward to work­ing hard, but it’s good, it’s good, and it’s very com­pet­i­tive now, and that’s giv­en me, my­self, a headache for se­lec­tion, which is al­ways good for a head coach.”

The T&T team is in Group F along­side Bar­ba­dos, El Sal­vador and Hon­duras. Dur­ing the group stage, each team will play two match­es at home and two away, and at the con­clu­sion of the stage, the six group win­ners will ad­vance to the Con­ca­caf Women’s C Cham­pi­onships.