Kevon “Show­time” Wood­ley’s rise to the na­tion­al foot­ball team has been both an achieve­ment of a dream and the emer­gence of po­ten­tial dra­ma on the coun­try’s se­nior team.

“It’s some­thing I’ve been dream­ing about for many years now. I want­ed to get a chance, just one chance to prove my­self, and now it’s here, so I want to make the most of it,” Wood­ley told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sun­day.

At the age of 37, Wood­ley is look­ing at long term, in­clud­ing help­ing the team qual­i­fy for the FI­FA World Cup 2026, which will be host­ed by a com­bined Con­ca­caf trio of the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and Mex­i­co.

Wood­ley, who hails from Mal­abar, Ari­ma, lives with his wife and two chil­dren (Theon, 4 and Cean­na, 8), who are un­doubt­ed­ly his biggest sup­port­ers.

‘Show­time’ is no stranger to hard work, hav­ing had to put in the ef­fort for the many goals he has scored in lo­cal foot­ball, but his re­sponse to be­ing picked by na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve for the com­ing World Cup Qual­i­fiers against Grena­da and the Ba­hamas was both ex­pect­ed and un­ex­pect­ed.

“It feels re­al­ly good to be se­lect­ed for the na­tion­al team. I have been wait­ing for this mo­ment for a while now but as I ex­pect that the pace at that lev­el would be a bit faster and much high­er, I’ve hired a per­son­al train­er to help pre­pare me for what I am about to face. I have de­cid­ed that dur­ing the week when I am train­ing with my club Cale­do­nia AIA, I will spend a cou­ple of hours af­ter those ses­sions with my train­er, and he is re­al­ly good,” Wood­ley said.

“Not be­cause they call me Show­time it means that I don’t work hard be­cause it is quite the op­po­site.”

‘Show­time’ made his de­but against Guyana in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, where he scored in both.

He sen­si­bly played a sim­ple hold­ing strik­er but sprung in­to ac­tion when he got op­por­tu­ni­ties to put away.

“I am ex­pe­ri­enced enough to know when to take it up a notch and when to take it down. But to be hon­est it will be no pres­sure for me be­cause foot­ball and scor­ing goals is all I know. I’ll on­ly be do­ing what I love to do, and what I have to do, and that is to score goals,” Show­time said.

Born in the coun­try­side of Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go, Wood­ley honed his foot­ball skills on the shores of the near­by beach where he spent most of his time in his for­ma­tive years. It was a mere nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion when he end­ed up on the T&T Beach foot­ball team where goal-scor­ing was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

On Wednes­day, ‘Show­time’ Wood­ley will get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to don the red, white, and black of T&T for an­oth­er time. An en­counter against Grena­da at the Sta­di­um will jump­start the coun­try’s cam­paign for a place in the World Cup and it will be fol­lowed by a sec­ond game against the Ba­hamas on Sat­ur­day in the Ba­hamas.

“To be hon­est I want to score a hat-trick for my coun­try start­ing with these teams. I can­not re­mem­ber see­ing a strik­er scor­ing a hat-trick for us but this is what I’ve been dream­ing of, and I know I can do it. As it is right now, I on­ly have pos­i­tive thoughts and once that is cul­ti­vat­ed it would on­ly be trans­lat­ed on the field,” Wood­ley said.