Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke is ex­cit­ed by the draw for the fi­nal round of the Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers, which sees his team in Group B along­side re­gion­al pow­er­house Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Bermu­da.

With all three teams, T&T has had its bat­tles, but more so with the Ja­maican "Reg­gae Boyz", where the bat­tle for re­gion­al su­prema­cy re­mains the goal. From the group, the teams will en­gage in home-and-away bat­tles dur­ing the FI­FA Win­dow of Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber, and the top team will earn au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Cup, where they join hosts Cana­da, Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States.

Should the So­ca War­riors not qual­i­fy as the win­ner of the group, they will have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy as one of the best two sec­ond-placed teams that will ad­vance to an in­ter-Con­fed­er­a­tion play-off.

At the of­fi­cial draw in Mi­a­mi on Thurs­day night the top six sec­ond-round group win­ners and the run­ners-up were placed in three groups of four teams, name­ly the T&T group fea­tur­ing Ja­maica, Bermu­da and Cu­ra­cao, as well as Group A which com­pris­es Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, Guatemala and Suri­name, and Group C- which in­cludes Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

Fri­day, Yorke wore his trade­mark smile as he ex­plained the ex­cite­ment he felt in the group.

"It's quite amaz­ing, ac­tu­al­ly, the fact that one of the Caribbean teams will be qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup is great all around. It's a very ex­cit­ing time, it's a very ex­cit­ing group to be in as well, cer­tain­ly with Ja­maica com­ing to the par­ty, as you know what they will bring to the group. And Cu­ra­cao, which is al­so a very good team be­ing led by Dick Ad­vo­caat, who is a well-re­spect­ed man­ag­er over the years and who cer­tain­ly has a lot in the lock­er to of­fer. So, I'm sure that's a team that we will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to. And of course, Bermu­da, which we've had some run-ins with over the years.

"Over­all, it's a great group for us, a group that we em­brace and a group that we look for­ward to com­pet­ing in, and we know that who­ev­er has to qual­i­fy has to be at their best be­cause it's a group that you can't take light­ly," Yorke said.

Yorke and his charges are on the verge of con­test­ing the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. The So­ca War­riors open against the Unit­ed States on Sun­day at 6 pm at Pay­Pal Park in San Jose and will next face Haiti on June 19 at 6.45 pm at the Shell En­er­gy Sta­di­um in Hous­ton, Texas.

They will next close off the group stage with a meet­ing against Sau­di Ara­bia on June 22, 7 pm at the Al­le­giant Sta­di­um in Las Ve­gas.

Yorke said the Gold Cup is his fo­cus.

"We (the staff) have been to­geth­er, and the con­ver­sa­tion has been brief. We cer­tain­ly have ac­knowl­edged what hap­pened (the draw), but at the mo­ment, we are ful­ly fo­cused on the Amer­i­can game in the Gold Cup, so we have to stay fo­cused on that.

"We cer­tain­ly have the World Cup be­hind our minds in terms of what we're try­ing to achieve, and the plan­ning will soon come for that, but at the mo­ment the Gold Cup is at the top of our list and we're ex­pect­ing to com­pete in that from all fronts.

"It has been a bit of a bump in the road, as I call it- the re­sult against Cos­ta Ri­ca was not ide­al, but cer­tain­ly, what we tried to ac­com­plish in terms of qual­i­fy­ing for the group stage, we did that. And now we're here in the Unit­ed States, we know the Gold Cup is a big thing for us in this part of the world. The Gold Cup is some­thing very tra­di­tion­al, and we haven't been able to progress out­side of the group stage for quite some time, so we're gonna try to do that. But we have some chal­lenges ahead, and Amer­i­ca does present prob­a­bly the biggest test of all, but we've got to get ready and pre­pare for that.

"It's an­oth­er ex­cit­ing time where foot­ball is con­cerned, where foot­ball is at in T&T, and we look for­ward to em­brac­ing it all. We look for­ward to be­ing ex­cit­ed in the group, but most im­por­tant­ly, we want to win, and we want to ad­vance to the next stage of the com­pe­ti­tion," said Yorke.