For­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal has lament­ed on the low turn out of women par­tic­i­pants at the T&T Women’s League Foot­ball (TTWoLF) host­ed in­au­gur­al 'C' Li­cense Coach­ing Course which be­gan on Mon­day at Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Corneal, a na­tion­al youth and se­nior coach is the Con­ca­caf/FI­FA in­struc­tor for the five-day work­shop and was speak­ing dur­ing the open­ing of the Coach­ing Course at the same venue at which on­ly one woman was a par­tic­i­pant on Sun­day.

Corneal who was as­sis­tant coach to Zo­ran Vranes when T&T par­tic­i­pat­ed at the FI­FA Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 World Cups first not­ed that this was a won­der­ful time for the par­tic­i­pants be­cause it's where they are merg­ing cours­es for the first time.

He added, "The T&TFA em­braced a very de­tailed course com­ing out of Eu­rope which is still done right now and which is be­ing pre­sent­ed for quite a while now.

With re­gards to his two as­sis­tants, Corneal said, "Coach­es Ra­jesh Latchoo and Mark Paul have both done the 'C' and 'B' Li­cens­es and have ex­celled in our B Li­cense which repli­cates the UE­FA B Li­cense."

"I have al­so been for­tu­nate to have not just taught the 'B' Li­cense for Con­ca­caf, but al­so to be part of the de­sign of the 'B' Li­cense in a part­ner­ship with Eu­rope. So we have had the best peo­ple help­ing Con­ca­caf, and we are now tak­ing it and mak­ing it ours."

He added, "This is the first time we are tak­ing the Con­ca­caf C Li­cense and run­ning it along­side ours. It's very sim­i­lar and some ar­eas would be ben­e­fi­cial to us on­ly and we will em­brace those ar­eas.

How­ev­er, Corneal not­ed that there is on­ly one is­sue that he has. and that will be the women as I would love to see more women. So I will chal­lenge WoLF to triple the women par­tic­i­pants by to­mor­row (Tues­day).

"We will find a way, have I done this be­fore yes, In St Kitts, they found sev­en women one af­ter­noon and we have to do it be­cause women need to run women's foot­ball.

"We are see­ing it with the ad­min­is­tra­tors and I am hap­py, but we al­so need to see it with the coach­es. And I am not say­ing there isn't room for men, as I would al­so like us to as­sist, but we must be able to em­brace women al­so to run. We got women play­ing but they need al­so to pass on this in­for­ma­tion.

"It's a lot of in­for­ma­tion to learn and al­so know you guys have a lot of in­for­ma­tion as well, so we can all help each oth­er.

"We are here to guide you and the main word here is com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­cause if all of us are here have the same in­for­ma­tion, how we com­mu­ni­cate that in­for­ma­tion will de­cide how peo­ple grasp it," stat­ed Corneal.

"So we can have the same in­for­ma­tion, but we must be able to com­mu­ni­cate that in­for­ma­tion prop­er­ly," end­ed Corneal.

How­ev­er, re­cent­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TFA), William Wal­lace ex­pressed his de­light with the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants want­i­ng to get in­volved in coach­ing, es­pe­cial­ly the num­ber of men.

He said, "It's re­al­ly good that you all are in­ter­est­ed in get­ting in­to that area, want­i­ng to be as­so­ci­at­ed or af­fil­i­at­ed with women's foot­ball and I think that is a big thing for us and you will al­so see it your­self as par­tic­i­pants as we con­tin­ue to evolve."

"We will see how im­por­tant this is to a small coun­try like ours as big com­pa­nies like Nike have been putting a lot in­to women's foot­ball be­cause they see the im­por­tance of women's foot­ball and we have a long way to go, but will par­tic­i­pants like you who are be­ing trained and are will­ing to get in there and do the ground­work we ex­pect that we will see the re­sults of that in the years to come."

" I thank you all for show­ing keen in­ter­est and I ex­pect you all to ben­e­fit as you are in the hands of an ex­cel­lent in­struc­tor in An­ton Corneal.

Com­ment­ing on the num­ber of women par­tic­i­pants in­volved TTWoLF gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Jamiy­la Muham­mad said that there was a high num­ber of women who were in­ter­est­ed in be­ing part of the Coach­ing Course.

How­ev­er, she point­ed out that due to school re­open­ing this week, it was very dif­fi­cult for the in­tend­ed women par­tic­i­pants to make the arrange­ments and get the time off need­ed to be in at­ten­dance from 1 pm to 6 pm dai­ly.

Muham­mad did state that there are plans to con­duct an­oth­er 'C' Coach­ing Course in March un­der the in­struc­tions of Corneal and it is ex­pect­ed by then that more women will have the time to be in­volved and get cer­ti­fied with a de­vel­op­men­tal pe­ri­od of six weeks af­ter the ses­sions al­so need­ing to be com­plet­ed to at­tain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Su­san Joseph-War­rick, Vice-Pres­i­dent of T&TFA and Pres­i­dent of WoLF wel­comed all the par­tic­i­pants and wished them suc­cess over the five-day coach­ing course.