North East Stars' Ross Rus­sell Jr, 25, a for­mer De­fence Force foot­ball stand-out, was the ma­jor sur­prise in a 22-man squad named by T&T se­nior men's foot­ball team coach Den­nis Lawrence for the March 20 friend­ly against Wales, in Wrex­ham, Eng­land.

The squad which de­parts to­day from To­ba­go for Man­ches­ter Eng­land around 5.15pm was re­leased to the lo­cal me­dia by T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Press Of­fi­cer, Shaun Fuentes on Fri­day night, while coach Lawrence briefed the me­dia at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um Cou­va yes­ter­day morn­ing ahead of the team's de­par­ture to­day for Eng­land.

The full team se­lect­ed by Lawrence in­cludes Shel­don Bateau, Cordell Cato, Daneil Cyrus, Aubrey David, Nick­alas Fren­derup, Adri­an Fon­cette, Levi Gar­cia, Kevon George, Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Tris­ton Hodge, Akeem Humphrey, Khaleem Hy­land, Alvin Jones, Nathan Lewis, Car­lyle Mitchell, Du­ane Muck­ette, Le­ston Paul, Mar­vin Phillip, Lester Pelti­er, Willis Plaza, Rus­sell Jr, and Mekeil Williams.

Last Au­gust Rus­sell Jr was freed to­day, af­ter two years in jail await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of for­mer Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Sel­wyn Gaff, 28, who June 6, 2016, from a gun­shot wound af­ter be­ing found in the Mac­queripe hill­side.

A for­mer na­tion­al youth play­er Rus­sell Jr, who is the son of for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er and the se­nior men's team cur­rent goal­keep­er coach and his cousin Balon­de­mu Julius, were de­tained af­ter Gaff’s death.

They were both then dis­charged from the De­fence Force and for­mal­ly charged, a week lat­er, with Gaff’s mur­der, pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion and shoot­ing at Gaff’s friend, Jesse Quashie, with in­tent to do pre­vi­ous bod­i­ly harm.

While Rus­sell Jr was cleared and freed 36-year-old Julius is still in cus­tody await­ing tri­al

Com­ment­ing on Rus­sell Jr se­lec­tion, Lawrence, a for­mer De­fence Force mem­ber him­self said, "One of the things that I iden­ti­fied from ear­ly on was that we need­ed to strength­en the left back po­si­tion, and un­der rec­om­men­da­tion from what I have seen of him, Ross did very well com­ing down to the back end of last sea­son.

Lawrence added, "He was in­vit­ed to be part of the train­ing group and I think he re­al­ly im­pressed with what he of­fered us and de­serves his se­lec­tion".

The T&T coach was al­so full of praise for the new call-up for show­ing great char­ac­ter is try­ing to get his ca­reer back on track

He said, "I think we al­so need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that we are talk­ing about a foot­baller that was caught in an is­sue that he was ac­cused of some­thing and for which he was found not guilt­ing of.

"And if you look at it now, part of the re­form is that the boy is back and get­ting his foot­ball ca­reer back to where it should be, and I think we need to see that as a pos­i­tive".

"Be­cause a lot come out and go back in and we are talk­ing here about a foot­ball who is here now ready to get his ca­reer up on the track and its an ab­solute plea­sure and a re­ward for him to be where he is now, so I see that on­ly as a pos­i­tive", stat­ed Lawrence.

Speak­ing on the eve of the team's de­par­ture for Wrex­ham, Eng­land, where the 79th world ranked T&T will come up against Wales, ranked 19th in the world, Lawrence said he had three weeks prepa­ra­tion with the lo­cal con­tin­gent and would like to com­mend the play­ers that were in­volved in that prepa­ra­tion be­cause it was a tough ask.

"We had to put them through their paces be­cause I think we all un­der­stood they had been in­ac­tive for a long pe­ri­od of time which is not good for any foot­baller, so we had to try and make good use of the time we had".

"Sec­ond­ly, I would like to say thanks to Wales for tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see T&T as for­mi­da­ble op­po­si­tion in their prepa­ra­tion for their Eu­ro qual­i­fiers".

"I think in all the prepa­ra­tions went well, bar­ring a cou­ple one or two lit­tle is­sues we had, which was well doc­u­ment­ed and has been all dealt with.

In terms of the squad se­lec­tion, Lawrence said he had one re­al is­sue in Ataulla Guer­ra who picked up a slight in­jury con­cern.

"The in­jury didn't al­low him to take part in the ma­jor­i­ty of the train­ing ses­sions and from that point, he wasn't in any fit con­di­tion to make the squad.

"Los­ing Guer­ra to in­jury is a blow be­cause he an im­por­tant part of the team, so he is not in­volved, and some­one else will take his place, and its an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them and that's the way we have to look at it.

"We al­so have the sit­u­a­tion with Jo­evin (Jones) that for per­son­al rea­sons had to ex­cused, rea­sons that I am not in a po­si­tion to make any more com­ments on.

"I think I will re­spect his wish­es in keep­ing it pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial, but over­all now is about the team, the group trav­el­ling from Trinidad to get to the UK to meet up in the prepa­ra­tion for the game against Wales, and hope­ful­ly we have got a squad ca­pa­ble of go­ing out there and rep­re­sent­ing T&T well and putting in a per­for­mance that will give us a pos­i­tive re­sult".

In terms of prepa­ra­tion for the lo­cal group, Lawrence said what he would say per­son­al­ly is that he would have liked them to be play­ing com­pet­i­tive foot­ball.

"We tried to put to­geth­er a three-week train­ing pro­gramme, and we man­aged to get three friend­ly games against St Ann's Rangers (two) and Po­lice.

"But we all know its dif­fi­cult and we are go­ing to take on a Wales squad, has got play­ers who have played 30 games in the Span­ish Liga as well as Eng­lish Pre­mier League.

"So in terms of the play­ers match tem­po, it's go­ing to be a bit dif­fi­cult for them, so that's why it was im­por­tant to se­lect a squad with a lot of the play­ers that are in­volved in leagues like Willis Plaza and Khaleem Hy­land, and Shel­don Bateau, be­cause these boys are more ac­tive at the mo­ment".

While ad­mit­ting his anx­i­ety about re­turn­ing to his for­mer club and city of res­i­dence Wrex­ham and the match against Wales, Lawrence was quick to point out that his team needs to re­mem­ber the big­ger pic­ture ahead.

"We need to stay fo­cus and un­der­stand what this is all about. This is part prepa­ra­tion for the Gold Cup be­cause the end re­sult is the Gold Cup and this is the next step. We al­so got the June friend­lies com­ing up, but right now we are in­to the Wales game.

Con­cern­ing then two play­ers who were re­leased from the train­ing squad last week af­ter fail­ing a ran­dom drug test Lawrence opt­ed against re­veal­ing their names, say­ing "Our jobs are to help the play­ers, not to re­veal any­thing. The clubs have been no­ti­fied and we are work­ing with the clubs and the idea now is to try and help these play­ers be­cause they are too im­por­tant for T&T foot­ball, so we need to help them so that they can be­come avail­able.

Asked if they would be re­unit­ed back in­to the squad in the fu­ture, the T&T coach stat­ed, "I be­lieve what they can do for T&T foot­ball is in­te­gral, so the idea now is to help them to work with the foot­ball clubs as the T&TFF is go­ing to as­sist in any way we can be­cause we need to help the play­ers.

"We need to get them where we think they should be and that is rep­re­sent­ing T&T foot­ball.

Mean­while, there will be yet an­oth­er home­com­ing for Head coach Den­nis Lawrence in Wales next week. The for­mer de­fend­er was able to con­firm use of the Ever­ton Train­ing fa­cil­i­ties for the se­nior team's first train­ing ses­sion on UK soil ahead of Wednes­day's In­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Wales at The Race­course in Wrex­ham.

T&T 22-man Squad

Shel­don Bateau, Cordell Cato, Daneil Cyrus, Aubrey David, Nick­las Fren­derup, Adri­an Fon­cette, Levi Gar­cia, Kevon George, Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Tris­ton Hodge, Akeem Humphrey, Khaleem Hy­land, Alvin Jones, Nathan Lewis, Car­lyle Mitchell, Du­ane Muck­ette, Le­ston Paul, Mar­vin Phillip, Lester Pelti­er, Willis Plaza, Ross Rus­sell Jr, Mekeil Williams.

Tech­ni­cal Staff

Den­nis Lawrence (coach), Stu­art Charles-Fevri­er (as­sis­tant coach), Stern John (as­sis­tant coach), Ross Rus­sell (goal­keep­er coach), Suresh Moo­nan (team doc­tor), Dave Isacc (medic), Saron Joseph (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Sam Hug­gins (train­er), Michael Williams (equip­ment man­ag­er), Wayne Cun­ning­ham (lo­gis­tics man­ag­er), Shaun Fuentes (me­dia of­fi­cer), Richard Piper (Team man­ag­er).