Bajans call up veteran striker

Barbados also lost first choice goalie Alvin Rouse to injury. Their England-based players, Louis Soares of Aldershot Town and Wrexton’s Neil Harvey are also expected to be in their starting eleven.

During the past decade, Lavine received rave reviews for his goal-scoring while representing Galway United, Athlone Town and Longford Town.

He was Irish Player Of The Year six times, while his club, Longford, won the Irish FA Cup in 2003.

With the stage being set for the opening clash, Haiti were also busy getting their act together with a training session at the Hasely Crawford Stadium training pitch yesterday for the second match of the double-header against Martinique slated to start at 8.30 pm.

None of the four competing teams were allowed to train yesterday on the Hasely Crawford playing pitch because of inclement weather.

The TT team reverted to their original base at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva and coach Wim Rijsbergen went about his usual business as he tried to get the youthful outfit ready.

“It’s not going to be easy but we will take on the challenge and try our best to get the job done. We have a good bunch of players who have shown strong commitment and a will to do well,” said Rijsbergen. “They are young and in that regard it is a plus for us as we look ahead to the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. We have some of the college players from the US and the other guys based locally and we will work hard to get it together,” Rijsbergen said yesterday.

“We don’t know very much about the Barbados team but that will not hamper our preparations for the opening match. We always will go into a match looking to win and we will play the kind of football to produce a good result,” he said. Experienced midfielder Leslie Fitzpatrick lined up in TT’s 3-2 win over Barbados in the 2005 Digicel Cup Finals and he feels the Soca Warriors should be able to hold their own at home on the opening day.

“We have three matches to play in this stage and we will take it one at a time so obviously the first is the main focus as of now. We don’t expect any of the teams will give us an easy time because no game is easy in the sport today especially when you have big things at stake like going to the Gold Cup,” he said.

“But I think the guys know what is required of them and we will be very professional and clever in our approach to these matches.

“The other two teams, Haiti and Martinique have never given us an easy time so we are not expecting to just get easy points. This for us means we will be playing with our guards up and also take the game to them because we want to get results as well,” said Fitzpatrick.