Soca Warriors play for pride

A DRAW will do the job but only a convincing victory today will be able to restore some pride for Trinidad and Tobago footballers in their closing Digicel Caribbean Cup fixture against Barbados at the National Stadium, Waterford. Following Tuesday’s 2-1 defeat to Cuba, the Soca Warriors were left needing a draw to advance as the third-placed team in the Caribbean to the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup. The TT players hold a better goal average than the host nation who they meet from 8 pm at the National Stadium. Later on Tuesday Jamaica got an early goal from Andy Williams to beat Barbados 1-0. Cuba and Jamaica will fight it out for the first place honours and US$100,000 from 6 pm today. A third-place finish for the Soca Warriors will see them take home US$20,000 and the final CFU spot in the CONCACAF Gold Cup in July.

The disappointing result on Tuesday came for coach Bertille St Clair’s team, after taking a 13th minute lead through Cornell Glen, gave up another soft goal and were made to pay early in the second half as Lester More scored what turned out to be the winner in a scrappy affair. To add salt to the already wounded Warriors, defender Cyd Gray suffered a serious knee injury referred to as damage to medial collateral ligament. He was taken to hospital and will miss today’s match while Derek King pulled up with a hamstring and is also out. Prior to that defender Marlon Rojas (hamstring) and Nigel Pierre (fractured right eye orbit) also missed Tuesday’s fixture and will both be missing in action against hosts Barbados.

All four players were treated by Trinidadian Dr Mario John at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The only replacement player likely to make it in time for the Barbados match is American A-League defender Nigel Henry who had been in training with the team for the past few weeks. Following Tuesday’s defeat, St Clair stayed away from excuses. “One of the things coming out of this tournament was being able to see which players can really make that transition onto the next level,” St Clair said. “Some folks will not like it and will think we should have won every match but this was another lesson for us and hopefully we could learn quickly from it.

I know the powers that be and other people will feel let down by the two results but once those involved can see where we went wrong and move on then things should happen for the better,” he said. “People will definitely have things to say but this is not the World Cup. Another thing is that all these teams want to beat up Trinidad so definitely come hard at us but this is all up for making us a stronger team,” he said. Now St Clair wants nothing but a win against the Bajans. “The two matches presented teams that were pressuring us and running at us right through and some guys came out of it looking okay and then some just didn’t show up too well. We have no choice but to win the next match because the Gold Cup is a must for us during the World Cup matches.”

Coming to join the action will be local soca stars Daw-E-Slaughter, Denise Belfon and KMC to perform at Digicel’s After Party at the stadium tonight. Hopefully, they will have a winning side to perform before. TT line-up: Duarance Williams, Anton Pierre, Keyeno Thomas, Derek King (Cyd Gray, 35th) Lyndon Andrews, Leslie Fitzpatrick (Angus Eve, 74th) David Nakhid, Jose Seabra, Densill Theobald, Cornell Glen, Scott Sealy (Conrad Smith, 75th).