Na­tion­al se­nior men's 7 and 15s rug­by coach, Lar­ry Mendez, will re­turn home to­day fol­low­ing a six-week coach­ing de­vel­op­ment stint in Eng­land and Wales. Speak­ing briefly on the tele­phone about his stay in the UK, Mendez said it is best de­scribed as ca­reer defin­ing.

"Ex­po­sure to all as­pects of rug­by coach­ing at the high­est lev­el has pro­vid­ed much food for thought. It has been a great ex­pe­ri­ence and I cer­tain­ly look for­ward to dis­cussing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rug­by Foot­ball Union (T&TR­FU) the way for­ward for the men's se­nior na­tion­al teams."

Mendez, who will over­see a na­tion­al train­ing squad fit­ness test­ing ses­sion on Sat­ur­day at the Har­vard Club, in­di­cat­ed that while there were many things that the T&TR­FU will have to ad­dress the start­ing point must be a ze­ro tol­er­ance ap­proach to play­ers who fail to meet fit­ness stan­dards.

"All the men­tors I had dur­ing my stay made it abun­dant­ly clear to me that we can­not ac­cept a lax at­ti­tude to­wards fit­ness and dis­ci­pline. The ex­pec­ta­tion must be that play­ers will work on their strength, fit­ness, tech­nique and skill lev­els. Be­fore we even be­gin to talk about sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and cut­ting edge meth­ods and what the TTR­FU should be do­ing. Play­ers who are not will­ing to com­mit to rais­ing their strength and con­di­tion­ing stan­dards and im­prov­ing their skill lev­els must be axed from the na­tion­al train­ing squad. Be­ing am­a­teur or hav­ing de­fi­cient rug­by in­fra­struc­ture is not an ex­cuse at the na­tion­al lev­el."