Two teams – T&T and Ja­maica, with sim­i­lar yet dif­fer­ent ob­jec­tives – will clash Tues­day (Oc­to­ber 28)in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, from 8 pm.

The T&T team, un­der coach­es Den­sill Theobald and Dami­an Brig­gs, will be at­tempt­ing to qual­i­fy for the FI­FA Women’s World Cup for the first time, while the Ja­maicans are try­ing to write their names in­to the his­to­ry books by book­ing a World Cup berth for a third con­sec­u­tive time.

Brig­gs, who joined the T&T team yes­ter­day from the Unit­ed King­dom, made it clear he wants his team to be com­pet­i­tive against their re­gion­al ri­vals tonight. With Theobald, he has been forced to nav­i­gate a tense sit­u­a­tion in which the first-choice coach, An­gus Eve, re­signed due to dis­agree­ment with mem­bers of the coach­ing staff over the se­lec­tion of a play­er.

Brig­gs, at the team’s fi­nal ses­sion ahead of the clash with the Ja­maicans, as­sured their fo­cus is on the match, as well as build­ing a team that will be able to com­pete for the World Cup Qual­i­fiers start­ing next month.

Quizzed about the Ja­maican match, Brig­gs said, “It’s good for us be­cause you al­ways want to play teams of a high­er lev­el be­cause that gives you a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to judge where you are and have bench­marks with­in cer­tain things in the team. So, it’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the team that we’ve got now to go out and show us what they’ve got. We’ve been work­ing for three weeks, but it’s been a fan­tas­tic three weeks where, for my­self and the rest of the staff, we’ve seen a mas­sive change and im­prove­ment every day. We’re not here to say it’s go­ing to be easy, be­cause we know it’s go­ing to be chal­leng­ing, but we al­so be­lieve in our­selves, and we just want to rep­re­sent the coun­try at all lev­els.”

Brig­gs al­so not­ed fur­ther, “I think this par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od is giv­ing us a good op­por­tu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly with it be­ing friend­ly, to look at the lo­cal­ly based play­ers. We added three girls who have come from abroad. But in gen­er­al, it’s a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to look at the lo­cal­ly based play­ers and as­sess them for what they are so that when we start to look fur­ther up­field at the oth­er play­ers, who play over­seas, we’re try­ing to see what blend or mix we’re go­ing to get with the best lo­cal ones and the best play­ing abroad.”

“And there is a big em­pha­sis on blend­ing the youth­ful ones with some of the more ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers and us­ing the ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers to help the youth­ful ones.”

The T&T team is set to be led by strik­er Ken­nya ‘Ya Ya’ Cord­ner, who will have vet­er­an mid­field­er Karyn Forbes as part of her sup­port. The team start­ed train­ing three weeks ago and will con­test Group F of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers, fea­tur­ing El Sal­vador, Hon­duras, and Bar­ba­dos. T&T will be the host to the group.

Oth­er qual­i­fy­ing rounds will be played in Feb­ru­ary and April next year. Brig­gs said he wants to see the team com­pete from top to bot­tom. “So we want to see our front­line hav­ing a go, our mid­field­ers sup­port­ing our de­fend­ers, to­geth­er with the units, as we try to play in that struc­ture that we’re to build. We want to play com­pet­i­tive foot­ball; we don’t just want to come and sit back. We al­ways want to try and ap­ply pres­sure when we can and just play at­trac­tive foot­ball.”

“We’re try­ing to get the best team pos­si­ble to try and com­pete with the three teams that are in our group, which all play in a dif­fer­ent style. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the two Cen­tral Amer­i­can teams will be dif­fer­ent styles from Bar­ba­dos, so we want to be able to mix and match to be­come adapt­able and be able to ad­just to the dif­fer­ent styles of play.”

Ja­maican coach Hu­bert Bus­by as­sured that any match be­tween T&T and Ja­maica is no friend­ly match. His team is in pur­suit of its third World Cup. Be­fore yes­ter­day’s fi­nal train­ing ses­sion, he told the me­dia, “We all know that when T&T play Ja­maica, it’s not friend­ly, so I know T&T is well coached and they will be well pre­pared for us. And we know and we re­spect them, and we have tak­en that ap­proach for the game, so we know it will be an in­tense match on home soil.”

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, their ob­jec­tive is al­so to qual­i­fy for the World Cup for the first time, and for this group, we want to make his­to­ry by go­ing to the World Cup for the third time con­sec­u­tive­ly and con­tin­ue to raise the stan­dard and the bar and show the world what it means for women’s foot­ball in the Caribbean to be played at that lev­el,” Bus­by con­clud­ed.

T&T WOMEN’S TEAM

FOR­WARDS

Aaliyah Prince, Afiyah Corn­wall, Ken­nya Cord­ner, Niki­ta Go­sine, Tyeisha Grif­fith

MID­FIELD­ERS

Alex­cia Ali, Kait­lyn Dar­went, Maria-Frances Ser­rant, Naomie Guer­ra, She­nieka Paul, Shurel­la Mendez, Tori Paul

DE­FEND­ERS

Chel­cy Ralph, Chris­sy Mitchell, Jade Bekai, Ja­vana Moreno, Karyn Forbes, Kedie John­son, Shau­nalee Govia, Tama­ra Smart, Vic­to­ria Swift

GOAL­KEEP­ERS

Keri My­ers, Tene­sha Palmer, Nico­lette Craig