NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing on the heels of US Ma­jor League Soc­cer al­low­ing clubs to be­gin to use out­door team train­ing fields for in­di­vid­ual work­outs, in com­pli­ance with de­tailed health and safe­ty pro­to­cols that were cre­at­ed in con­sul­ta­tion with med­ical and in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­perts due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, the Unit­ed Soc­cer League has opt­ed to do the same.

The move will come as a re­lief to most clubs and play­ers as the USL had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­tend­ed its train­ing mora­to­ri­um through May 15 for all of its pro­fes­sion­al clubs.

Yes­ter­day, the quin­tet of T&T play­ers in­clu­sive of Min­neso­ta Unit­ed trio, mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no and goal­keep­ers Greg Ran­jits­ingh and Dayne St Clair, along with Jones’ broth­ers, Alvin (Re­al Salt Lake) and Jo­evin (Seat­tle Sounders) had the op­tion to re­turn to train­ing with their re­spec­tive clubs af­ter the de­ci­sion to al­low play­ers and their clubs to con­duct out­door team work­outs was an­nounced by MLS on Fri­day last.

How­ev­er, it was not­ed that all in­di­vid­ual work­outs are vol­un­tary and may not be in con­flict with lo­cal pub­lic health of­fi­cial or gov­ern­ment poli­cies.

By al­low­ing play­ers, vol­un­tar­i­ly, to utilise team-op­er­at­ed fields for in­di­vid­ual work­outs, MLS clubs will be able to pro­vide a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment that en­sures ad­her­ence to safe­ty pro­to­cols and so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures for play­ers and staff.

And yes­ter­day via a re­lease on the USLSoc­cer.com web­site it was stat­ed that: Op­er­at­ing un­der the guid­ance of lo­cal and state health au­thor­i­ties, the Unit­ed Soc­cer League to­day (Wednes­day, May, 6) an­nounced a mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced train­ing mora­to­ri­um that will al­low Cham­pi­onship and League One clubs, at their op­tion, to open out­door fields for non-con­tact train­ing in small groups as well as train­ing rooms for play­er treat­ment.

This means that no few­er than 11 more T&T in­ter­na­tion­als can now re­turn to train­ing with their clubs in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion in­clu­sive of An­dre For­tune (North Car­oli­na), Le­ston Paul (Mem­phis 901 FC), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (In­dy Eleven), Du­ane Muck­ette (Mem­phis 901), Shan­non Gomez (Sacra­men­to Re­pub­lic), Tris­ton Hodge (Mem­phis 901 FC), Cordell Cato (Ok­la­homa City En­er­gy FC), Ke­van George (Char­lotte In­de­pen­dence), Noah Pow­der (Re­al Mon­archs), and the duo of Kier­ron Ma­son, and Le­land Archer, both of Charleston Bat­tery.

Be­sides, the trio of Je­lani Pe­ters (Toron­to FC II), Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham (For­ward Madi­son) and Luke Singh (Toron­to FC) of USL League One al­so has the op­tion to re­turn to train­ing.

Fur­ther north, T&T play­ers at­tached to Cana­di­an Pre­mier League clubs, Akeem Gar­cia and An­dre Ram­per­sad, both of HFX Wan­der­ers; Ka­reem Moses (Ed­mon­ton FC) and Val­our FC duo, Fed­eri­co Pe­na and Sky­lar Thomas are al­so set to re­sume their sea­sons.

The USL re­lease added: Small group set­tings will be lim­it­ed to up to four play­ers, with no more than one ath­let­ic train­er and one mem­ber of a club’s tech­ni­cal staff al­lowed on each field dur­ing a ses­sion.

How­ev­er, while the USL has eased up lock­down re­stric­tions for play­ers to train with their clubs it al­so not­ed that teams in ar­eas where lo­cal and state rec­om­men­da­tions for stay-at-home or­ders have not been lift­ed should not train or al­low treat­ment that is pro­hib­it­ed by their ju­ris­dic­tion.

Al­so, all clubs have been in­formed to no­ti­fy the league of their plans to re­turn to the team’s train­ing fa­cil­i­ty be­fore re-open­ing while train­ing is vol­un­tary for play­ers.