New­ly ap­point­ed North East Stars coach An­gus Eve has in­clud­ed strik­er, 30-year-old Ker­ry Bap­tiste in­to his plans for up­com­ing Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League sea­son which be­gin in Au­gust. Eve, a for­mer San Juan Jabloteh and Ma Pau SC as­sis­tant coach who signed a two-year con­tract with the Dar­ryl Ma­habir-owned club ear­li­er this month has al­so snapped up T&T Un­der-23 duo, de­fend­er Ka­reem Moses, for­mer­ly of St Ann's Rangers and mid­field­er Mic­ah Lewis, for­mal­ly of Cale­do­nia AIA. Bap­tiste, who climbed his way from T&T U20 to se­nior lev­el and be­gan his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer at Jabloteh(2003-2006), is a for­mer team­mate and play­er of Eve at the San Juan club. Bap­tiste then moved to Joe Pub­lic (2007-2010) and had tri­als with Eng­lish Cham­pi­onship club Ip­swich Town (De­cem­ber 2009) and Ma­jor League Soc­cer clubs Toron­to FC (May 2010) and Seat­tle Sounders FC(2011) be­fore fi­nal­ly sign­ing a short term deal with North Amer­i­can Soc­cer League side FC Tam­pa Bay in Ju­ly 2011. He then re­turned to T&T and joined T&TEC in Jan­u­ary un­til the end of the 2011-2012 sea­son. He is best re­mem­ber for his record 48 goals in the 2009 sea­son at Joe Pub­lic which led to the club to record haul of five ti­tles. "When you think of an ef­fi­cient strik­er at club and na­tion­al lev­el, you think of Ker­ry Bap­tiste," said the new North East Stars coach. "So I ex­pect noth­ing less than twen­ty(20) goals from him this sea­son."

Bap­tiste be­came a free agent af­ter a short spell with last sea­son's Dig­i­cel Pro League run­ner-up T&TEC which fin­ished just a point shy of cham­pi­on W Con­nec­tion. Oth­er play­ers ex­pect­ed to sign for Stars pend­ing trans­fers in­cludes the an Juan Jabloteh trio of goal­keep­er Cleon John, de­fend­er Shel­don Bateau and mid­field­er Eli­jah Man­ners. De­fend­ers Glen­ton Wolfe, Kern Navar­ro and Seon Pow­er, and mid­field­er Akeil Gue­vara are the on­ly play­ers with ex­ist­ing North East Stars' con­tracts and will serve un­der Eve. With re­gards to the sign­ing of Bap­tiste, Eve said, "When you think of an ef­fi­cient strik­er at club and na­tion­al lev­el, you think of Ker­ry Bap­tiste. "So I ex­pect noth­ing less than twen­ty (20) goals from him this sea­son." "This is a year of con­sol­i­da­tion for us," said Eve. "We are go­ing to bring in a lot of play­ers, pri­mar­i­ly Un­der-23 play­ers who we can con­tin­ue to de­vel­op, to help T&T go for­ward not just at youth lev­el but al­so at se­nior lev­el. (There would al­so be) a trick­ling of se­nior play­ers so that they can help de­vel­op these young play­ers to come on." Vet­er­an strik­er Gary Glas­gow will serve as as­sis­tant coach and oth­er new tech­ni­cal ad­di­tions in­clude for­mer Jabloteh goal­keep­ing coach Bri­an James, for­mer Ma Pau ad­min­is­tra­tor Bri­an Bain and Earl Joseph as team phys­io­ther­a­pist.