T&T se­nior men’s head coach Den­nis Lawrence an­nounced on Mon­day the in­clu­sion of three over­seas-based play­ers in this coun­try’s squad for Fri­day’s CON­CA­CAF Na­tion’s League Qual­i­fi­er away to Mar­tinique.

Lawrence has se­cured the ser­vices of Cana­di­an-based for­ward Ryan Telfer who now cam­paigns for York 9 Fc, on loan from Toron­to FC, An­dre For­tune, a mid­field­er with North Car­oli­na FC in the USL and Eng­lish-based strik­er Daniel Carr.

For­tune has rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Un­der-20 and U-17 lev­els, play­ing along­side Levi Gar­cia. He has won two “Play­er of the Week” awards this sea­son in the USL. Telfer and Carr re­ceived the rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al clear­ance to play for T&T on Mon­day morn­ing.

Telfer has scored four league goals (along with two in the Cana­di­an Cham­pi­onship, in­clud­ing one against Mon­tre­al), has con­sis­tent­ly looked dan­ger­ous, and even bagged an as­sist when he made a three-minute sub­sti­tute ap­pear­ance for his par­ent club, Toron­to FC.

Carr made 34 ap­pear­ances for Irish club Sham­rock Rovers last sea­son and spent two years at Read­ing FC dur­ing his youth ca­reer. He has al­so ap­peared for the likes of Alder­shot Town, Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge, Hud­der­s­field Town and Swedish club Karl­stad BK.

All three play­ers trav­elled with the group to St Lu­cia on Mon­day.

The rest of the squad in­volves some of the reg­u­lars such as Min­neso­ta Unit­ed mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no, Seat­tle Sounders’ Jo­evin Jones and Bel­gium-based de­fend­er Shel­don Bateau.

Cap­tain Khaleem Hy­land was forced to with­draw due to a ham­string in­jury while Ataulla Guer­ra was al­so ruled out with in­jury. US-based trio Cordell Cato, Greg Ran­jits­ingh and Ne­veal Hack­shaw are all un­avail­able due to pass­port re­lat­ed is­sues.

Lawrence spoke about the com­po­si­tion of his se­lec­tion as the squad ar­rived in St Lu­cia on Mon­day af­ter­noon for a three-day train­ing camp be­fore de­part­ing for Mar­tinique on Thurs­day ahead of the clash. T&T will host Mar­tinique at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um from 9 pm on Mon­day in an­oth­er Na­tions League qual­i­fi­er.

“The prepa­ra­tion starts to­day. Most of the guys ar­rived to­day (Mon­day) and to­mor­row (Tues­day) and we will be on the train­ing pitch for the first time to­mor­row (to­day). Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Cordell Cato and Greg Ran­jits­ingh are all un­avail­able be­cause their pass­ports are in­dif­fer­ence process­es now,” Lawrence ex­plained. “Cordell and Greg are in the process of ob­tain­ing their green card and Hack­shaw is in the process of get­ting a Cana­di­an visa. We lost Khaleem Hy­land who pulled his ham­string on Fri­day.

“As of this morn­ing, we can an­nounce that Ryan Telfer and Daniel Carr is now part of the squad. We have been in con­ver­sa­tion with them for a long pe­ri­od now get­ting them to rep­re­sent T&T and they fi­nal­ly agreed to do it and we have now con­firmed all the doc­u­men­ta­tion to make them el­i­gi­ble to play for T&T.

“We have al­so in­tro­duced An­dre For­tune who will be in­volved for the first time at the se­nior lev­el with me. We have brought back in the likes of Nathaniel Gar­cia, Ju­dah Gar­cia and James Per­ry. Look­ing at the As­cen­sion League what I have tried to do is se­lect the squad based on play­ers who are play­ing com­pet­i­tive foot­ball be­cause I think we had a lot of lessons to learn from past events,” Lawrence said. “So the squad is made up of most­ly of play­ers that have been ac­tive and have been play­ing and we are try­ing to see how best we can en­sure that we are much bet­ter pre­pared.

"I'm rel­a­tive­ly quite hap­py with the make-up of the squad and we will as­sess every­one when they come in. We have some ex­pe­ri­ence in there along with some youth so the idea is to have the squad gel as best as pos­si­ble for the games com­ing up."

Team

Shel­don Bateau, Daniel Carr, Daneil Cyrus,Aubrey David, Adri­an Fon­cette, An­dre For­tune, Ju­dah Gar­cia, Levi Gar­cia, Nathaniel Gar­cia, Ke­van George, Alvin Jones, Jo­evin Jones, Mar­cus Joseph, Ke­ston Julien, Car­lyle Mitchell, Kevin Moli­no, Le­ston Paul, Jameel Per­ry, Mar­vin Phillip, Ross Rus­sell Jr, Glen­roy Samuel, Ryan Telfer, Jo­mal Williams

Staff: Den­nis Lawrence, (head coach), Stephen Fevri­er (as­sis­tant coach)

Ross Rus­sell (goal­keep­er coach), Akash Dhanai (doc­tor), Mac Al­lis­ter Estra­da (medic), Dex­ter Thomas (train­er), Sion Cain (mas­sage ther­a­pist), James Coneboy (match an­a­lyst), Michael Williams (equip­ment man­ag­er), Wayne Cun­ning­ham (lo­gis­tics man­ag­er), Shaun Fuentes (me­dia of­fi­cer), Richard Piper (team man­ag­er).