Re­cent­ly ap­point­ed women’s se­nior team coach, Welsh­man James Thomas is in T&T to of­fi­cial­ly take up du­ty.

He ar­rived in the coun­try last week and is cur­rent­ly in quar­an­tine but he has been on the ball over the past few weeks, draw­ing up plans for the pro­gramme with T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTFA) Di­rec­tor of Women’s foot­ball Jinelle James and Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor Dion La Fou­cade.

A re­lease from the TTFA on Tues­day said the Welsh­man al­so met with a group of se­nior team play­ers to in­tro­duce and out­line his vi­sion for the team's pro­gramme.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease: "The play­ers to form the pro­vi­sion­al squad list will un­der­go med­ical screen­ing at the FA’s part­ner Health­net Caribbean Lim­it­ed this week and will then un­der­go fit­ness as­sess­ments to pro­vide Thomas with the nec­es­sary da­ta as to how he would pro­ceed in map­ping out the cy­cles of train­ing sched­ules and wider cal­en­dar, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the play­ers have been in­ac­tive for a con­sid­er­able length of time.

"In con­sul­ta­tion with pub­lic health ad­vice and rel­e­vant of­fi­cials, a start date for the of­fi­cial train­ing will be de­ter­mined short­ly."

On Mon­day, the Welsh­man, talk speak­ing to the TTFA Me­dia, said: "I’m de­light­ed to be in T&T fi­nal­ly. Ob­vi­ous­ly, there have been a few de­lays be­cause of re­stric­tions and COVID.

“But I’ve been here for a cou­ple of days now and I’m cur­rent­ly re­view­ing and analysing play­ers and re­al­ly kind of fine-tun­ing the game plan go­ing for­ward. I’m re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to get­ting out on the field and work­ing with the play­ers and staff and kick-start­ing the pro­gramme as soon as we can do that. It’s about get­ting us ready for the next World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign.”

Thomas, a for­mer Welsh women’s team coach added: “It is about re­al­ly mak­ing sure that every sin­gle per­son in the staff, when ap­point­ed, first and fore­most, is ful­ly aware of the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of them in terms of the con­tent of de­liv­ery but al­so the way we de­liv­er it and how we deal with the play­ers to re­al­ly en­sure that it’s an en­vi­ron­ment that the play­ers want to be in, and it’s an en­vi­ron­ment where the play­ers would be chal­lenged to learn. It has to be one that they will be hap­py and com­fort­able in, which is re­al­ly im­por­tant as well.

"Fol­low­ing on from that I will, over the next cou­ple of weeks, be speak­ing to some of the play­ers again. I want to get their thoughts on ar­eas where maybe they feel as a play­ing group, we’ve been lack­ing as a na­tion pre­vi­ous­ly. It’s al­so for me to start putting in­for­ma­tion across from my per­spec­tive as to what I think should be added. Hope­ful­ly, with my thoughts and theirs, we can re­al­ly hit the ground run­ning as soon as we get on the field and ul­ti­mate­ly try and win foot­ball match­es which is why we are here.”

The foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion will be ac­cept­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for oth­er po­si­tions on the se­nior women’s team staff in the com­ing days. The spec­i­fi­ca­tions for these po­si­tions will be re­leased in due course, the re­lease stat­ed.