John gunning to shake N/Ireland nets

Trinidad and Tobago’s senior footballers will arrive in Tobago today to fine-tune their preparations for their friendly international against Northern Ireland at the Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacelot from 5 pm on Sunday. With the 4-1 defeat to Scotland still fresh on the minds of coach Bertille St Clair and his players, one man who will be at some ease going into the contest is Stern John.
 
The top striker  revealed that he signed a new one-year extension with Birmingham City in the English premiership and is now happy to be able to concentrate totally on his game for country and club. John put pen to paper following his goalscoring performance against the Scots on Sunday after delaying the agreement for some weeks. “I have that out of the way now and I will be with the club for another year. It is going to be difficult but I know I can score goals once I get a fair chance. Football is a funny game so you never know what’s going to happen. I am prepared to face the fight. I’ve been there and done that before,” John said yesterday.

“It’s important for me to have a good preseason and then take that into the season with the ‘Blues’,” he said. Looking ahead to the Northern Ireland clash for which Birmingham City goalkeeper Maik Taylor is the top custodian, he added: “The loss to Scotland was an embarrassing one but now we have to bounce back and show some quality. As the coach said, we need to play with more passion and give the extra effort and I am confident that the team can  do it.” While John tied up his deal, utility player Anthony Rougier was released by Bristol City and is now in search of a club which he should find soon following an impressive spell with the side which narrowly lost out on promotion to the English First Division. He was allowed to leave because the club failed in their attempt to go up.

English-born defender Ian Cox is already in Tobago, having flown there from London while promising Peterborough midfielder Andre Boucaud, Wrexham midfielder Carlos Edwards, goalkeeper Clayton Ince and Rougier were scheduled to arrive home yesterday after attending to personal business. St Clair has included in his squad Joel Bailey who is attached to American A-League side Montreal Impact and US College-based striker Daryll Roberts. The Tobagonian coach will be specifically keen to see how Bailey fares particularly following his prolific goalscoring performance last week  against a Haitian select team comprising of some of their US-based and upcoming players from the country’s programme. Bailey struck four times including three strikes during a ten-minute span in the second half  as his club ousted the Haitians 6-0 in a friendly encounter. The former Naparima College standout also notched one in Impact’s 4-1 win over Toronto Lynx in a league match last Friday.

Less than two weeks away from the opening qualifier against Dominican Republic (on June 13) technical director Lincoln Phillips feels that TT could find themselves in a good position to regain some confidence after the Scotland loss. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland coach Lawrie Sanchez has issued an urgent call for Linfield goalkeeper Alan Mannus after a finger injury ruled Sunderland ‘keeper Michael Ingham out of the match with St Kitts/Nevis yesterday and Sunday’s match in Tobago. Sanchez has also been forced to abandon his plan to rest Birmingham City custodian Maik Taylor, setting up a chance for John to get one on his club teammate. Sanchez was hoping for a win in the match against Barbados which ended 1-1 and now he is urging his players to put their best effort into the TT clash.

“I said that there was nothing we could do about the bad pitch, the referee, the poor floodlights, the humidity, the changing room facilities and everything else that people may have thought was against us (versus Barbados). I added that there is no point in whining. You are in a different culture and you have to get on with it and now we have to look forward to getting the results against Trinidad and Tobago and St Kitts,” Sanchez said.