"One way or the other, we are going to try and win this game against Mexico," national women's football coach Richard Hood assured, yesterday.
The two teams clash tonight at 7 pm at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain in the final match in Group 'A' of the Concacaf Women's Gold Cup Qualifiers.
The Mexicans hammered T&T 6-0 in the first meeting between the teams on September 26 and now lead the group with nine points from three wins in as many matches.
Puerto Rico holds on to second on the standings with four points with a win (2-1) and a tie (0-0) against the Women Warriors. The local team is at the bottom of the chart on a point from three matches. However, T&T has a slim chance of overtaking the Puerto Ricans on goal difference if they can beat the Mexicans by five clear goals.
Hood believes they can but highlighted several issues his team has been plagued by during their preparations, including not having access to train at the Stadium, despite it being their home game tonight.
"Well, I really don't know how that becomes an advantage for us. It's an advantage from the point of view that we're not playing 8,000 feet high altitude, but the national stadium is our home base but we don't train there," said Hood, yesterday.
"We have not trained there, so the pitch is not an advantage for us, it might be some sort of advantage if we have support from our fans or whatever, but it's not really an advantage playing at the Hasely Crawford Stadium. We have not had the advantage of training at the stadium. The stadium has been rented out for school football and other things, other activities, but the national team does not have access to it.
"We have not touched that pitch since the Puerto Rico games," Hood explained. Those matches were played in late October (October 27 and October 31).
Besides that, Hood's preparation was also paralysed by the late arrival of most of his foreign-based stars who make up some 90 percent of the starting team tonight.
The top two teams will qualify for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, a position that appeared relatively attainable at the start, but Hood's inability to secure his key players abroad in time during training sessions worked against him.
"I am never really satisfied with our preparation, it's a bit of a difficult situation given that quite a number of players who will be starting the game do not reside in T&T, therefore we only had a short opportunity to work with them. This camp was a five-day camp, that was the best we could have done under the circumstances," said the national coach.
"It's always sort of difficult to get yourself organised the way you would like, which is five days or seven sessions. To add to that, a couple of players only came in yesterday, so basically they would have only done yesterday's session and the half session that we have today (yesterday), so you know we have to work around those challenges."
Hood also explained: "We have done the work, so I think it's really up to the players to go and interpret the work we would have done and see how best they can execute it on the pitch."
From the outlook, today's requested five-goal win for the Women's Warriors will provide a major challenge, however, Hood promised they will take a positive approach against the Mexicans, as they try to counter their attacking power while mounting serious attacks of their own to get the required result.
T&T TEAM:
GOALKEEPERS: Simone Eligon, Malaika Dedier, K'Lil Keshwar
DEFENDERS: Shauna Lee Giovia, Britney Williams, Crystal Mollineaux, Tamara Johnson, Jonelle Cato, Victoria Swift, Abbigail Moos, Chrissy Mitchell
MIDFIELDERS: Chelcy Ralph, Naomie Guerra, Renee Mike, Zoe Maxwell, Karyn Forbes, Sarah De Gannes
FORWARDS: Orielle Martin, Asha James, J'Eleisha Alexander, Tori Paul, Tsaianne Leander, Maria-Frances Serrant
GROUP A
Pos*Team*M*P*W*D*L*Gf*Ga*GD*Pts
1*Mexico*3*3*0*0*11*1*10*9
2*Puerto Rico*4*1*1*2*3*6*-3*4
3*T&T*3*0*1*2*1*8*-7*1
