De­fence Force will head in­to CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup ac­tion against Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day from 8 pm.

Play­ing in Group A the Teteron Bar­racks men will have one thing and one thing on­ly on their minds, and it’s to start the cam­paign pos­i­tive­ly with three points. It has been a per­fect sea­son thus far for the army/coast­guard com­bi­na­tion unit win­ners of both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (T&TPFL) league and Knock­out ti­tles in Ju­ly.

The team is seek­ing to take that mo­men­tum in­to the Con­ca­caf cam­paign seek­ing a third ti­tle of the sea­son.

The re­turn to this re­gion­al stage has been long in com­ing af­ter they won CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons Cup crowns in 1978 and 1985 and were al­so win­ners of the 2001 Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club Cham­pi­onship.

Cap­tain and the de­fend­er with the goal-scor­ing touch Justin Gar­cia is rel­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead the squad in­to bat­tle as they aim to cre­ate even more his­to­ry.

Speak­ing dur­ing the pre-match press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day he said: “This is a tour­na­ment we have been want­i­ng to play in for the longest while. It was one of our goals at the be­gin­ning of the sea­son and we have worked re­al­ly hard to get here. We have been putting in that ex­tra work since the sea­son end­ed lo­cal­ly, we know where our weak­ness­es were so we rat­i­fied them and are stronger now.”

Ev­i­dence of this is the sign­ing of four new play­ers to strength­en their squad with mid­field­er Nathaniel Gar­cia and goal­keep­er Jabari St Hillaire, both of whom last played for Ter­minix La Horquat­ta Rangers, De­fend­ers Isa­iah Gar­cia was signed from Point Fortin Civic and Dar­nell Hospedales, a for­mer AC Port-of-Spain stand­out.

Hav­ing a sneak peek of the op­po­si­tion, the head coach of the De­fence Force Lloyd An­drews al­so told the me­dia: “De­spite their speed, tech­ni­cal­ly they seem to be not as sound. We are go­ing to play our game and do the things we know and do them well. We will be aim­ing to spread the ball, use the en­tire width of the pitch and starve them of the ball.”

Cav­a­lier FC who ar­rived in T&T on Mon­day are no strangers to big oc­ca­sions, They have some pedi­gree un­der their belt hav­ing won two Ja­maica Pre­mier League ti­tles along with three knock­out ti­tles in re­cent years in­clud­ing this sea­son to book their place in this tour­na­ment.

How­ev­er, they will be lack­ing some fire­pow­er as they will be with­out their mar­quee play­er Col­in An­der­son who se­cured a con­tract with North Mace­do­nia out­fit F.C Bre­gal­ni­ca. The 23-year-old scored 20 goals over the sea­son pro­pelling them to fin­ish sec­ond in the Ja­maican Pre­mier League stand­ings and all the way to the Cup Fi­nal.

Head coach Rudolph Speid is con­fi­dent his side can get the job done on the road de­spite trans­fer­ring six play­ers over­seas. “We know we have a tough game to­mor­row, we have seen that they (De­fence Force) are big and strong, they are cham­pi­ons who know how to win games. In con­trast, we have the youngest pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball team in the world and with a lot of teenagers with­in the squad and the old­est play­er just 24 years old That speaks to the youth and ea­ger­ness that we will be aim­ing to play with, giv­ing the young and brave a chance”.

Tick­ets are priced at $50 for Cov­ered and $25 for Un­cov­ered and can be pur­chased at the venue.