TORON­TO, Cana­da – Cana­da-based mid­field­er An­dre Ram­per­sad says his maid­en call-up to in­ter­na­tion­al du­ty for T&T was a “great feel­ing”, and marked the ful­fill­ment of a child­hood dream to rep­re­sent his coun­try.

The 28-year-old, who cap­tains Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers in the Cana­di­an Pre­mier League, was named in a 24-man squad for CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League B match­es against the Ba­hamas on Fri­day and Nicaragua on Mon­day.

And Ram­per­sad be­lieves na­tion­al du­ty will help to fur­ther im­prove his over­all game, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing in­to con­tact with team­mates from oth­er leagues around the world.

“One of the dreams as a kid play­ing soc­cer is rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try. To fi­nal­ly see all the hard work that I’ve put in come in­to play now, it’s def­i­nite­ly a great feel­ing for me,” Ram­per­sad told the League web­site.

“[I’m] def­i­nite­ly ex­cit­ed to rep­re­sent the red, white and black. Cir­cum­stances made it what it was be­fore, why I wasn’t able to go, but now I’m ex­cit­ed and I’m up for the chal­lenge.

“When you join a na­tion­al team, the ma­jor­i­ty of the guys there play in dif­fer­ent leagues. [There are] cer­tain guys you prob­a­bly don’t know, cer­tain guys that play in high­er leagues.

“One is (Kevin) Moli­no, he plays in MLS, a play­er that I looked up to for a long time. Just be­ing around these guys will raise my lev­el.”

The 32-year-old Moli­no will, how­ev­er, miss the two Na­tion League match­es through in­jury.

Ram­per­sad moved to the Cana­da Pre­mier League in 2019, sign­ing with Hal­i­fax who were then un­der the man­age­ment of for­mer T&T na­tion­al head coach, Stephen Hart.

He was made club cap­tain the fol­low­ing sea­son and has gone on to make near­ly 90 ap­pear­ances for the No­va Sco­tia out­fit.

Ram­per­sad was called up to train with T&T in 2021 but pan­dem­ic trav­el re­stric­tions pre­vent­ed the move. He is now look­ing for­ward to link­ing up with head coach An­gus Eve.

“[Eve] tried a lot be­fore to get me in. The as­sis­tant coach Derek King is there as well, who was my coach back in the day, and then was the as­sis­tant with the Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers,” Ram­per­sad ex­plained.

“The con­ver­sa­tion we had was just straight up: ‘we want you here and you can be a big part of what we’re try­ing to de­vel­op and what we’re try­ing to do’. They be­lieve in me, to be there and show my po­ten­tial.”

Ram­per­sad said he had re­ceived the strong back­ing of his club, with sport­ing di­rec­tor Matt Fe­gan play­ing an in­te­gral role in the process.

“He said, ‘you know what? This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for you and we’re gonna let you go’,” Ram­per­sad re­lat­ed. “He had a word in that and talked to them for me, and there was the op­por­tu­ni­ty, so I took it.”

CMC