Shaun Fuentes

W Con­nec­tion FC is mak­ing full use of the video to mar­ket its foot­ballers and ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ex­port­ing play­ers to for­eign leagues. Club Pres­i­dent David John Williams shared some in­sight in­to the club's video li­brary which stores tapes and DVDs of al­most every match played by the club's teams from 1999. Spe­cif­ic play­er high­light videos have been cre­at­ed which has led to the club send­ing sev­er­al play­ers on tri­als. Sev­er­al videos are up­loaded on Youtube which al­lows for­eign scouts and agents to ac­cess high­lights.

One of the club's youth stars Neil Ben­jamin has been on tri­al with Dal­las FC and has at­tract­ed in­ter­est from Hous­ton Dy­namo and two Ital­ian clubs af­ter be­ing seen by scouts who did not trav­el to Trinidad.

"We have record­ed every game at the youth and se­nior lev­el and we try to use the video, not just for our tac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tions, but al­so for mar­ket­ing play­ers.

"As a re­sult, we have helped play­ers se­cure moves out­side as well as nu­mer­ous tri­als. Noth­ing is cast in stone but this is just to keep the for­eign con­tacts aware and keep them in­ter­est­ed. "We have pret­ty much de­vel­oped our club through the video medi­um and I would like to en­cour­age oth­er clubs to use this medi­um as well. It ben­e­fits the clubs and the play­ers," John Williams said, adding that some 14 agents had re­ceived video high­lights of Con­nec­tion's match­es last week in the space of 45 min­utes.

Over­seas clubs and scouts have been able to keep abreast on the progress of play­ers such as Shah­don Win­ches­ter, Hugh­tun Hec­tor, Jan Michael Williams and Jo­evin Jones among oth­ers.

"We have been for­tu­nate to ben­e­fit from the trans­fers of a cou­ple play­ers but the club has in­vest­ed a lot in terms of play­er de­vel­op­ment and a lot more ef­fort is made on a dai­ly and even night­ly ba­sis to mar­ket play­ers. Some­times all 3 or 4 o'clock in the morn­ing I am up skyp­ing or on the tele­phone with agents in Asia and Eu­rope," Williams stat­ed. "I hon­est­ly don't ex­pect Shah­don to be with W Con­nec­tion in Jan­u­ary as well as two oth­er play­ers. The chal­lenge we may face will be keep­ing this young squad to­geth­er which is a pos­i­tive sign re­gard­ing the ex­port­ing of our play­ers and help­ing them to de­vel­op." Williams added that two of­fi­cials from an Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship club will be guests of the club in Oc­to­ber and an­oth­er from Italy in No­vem­ber.

Woo Ling em­braced by W Con­nec­tion

Young Matthew Woo Ling fell in love with the set up at W Con­nec­tion in his first train­ing ses­sion un­der Stu­art Charles Fevri­er dur­ing the sum­mer va­ca­tion and de­cid­ed that he want­ed to join the club on a full time ba­sis. The Fa­ti­ma Col­lege stu­dent spent the en­tire pre­sea­son cam­paign with the club and made his de­but two Fri­day's ago in the club's 4-1 de­mo­li­tion of Di­recTV North East Stars in the First Cit­i­zen's Cup fix­ture at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Hav­ing turned 15 on Sep­tem­ber 15, the lit­tle mid­field wiz­ard has been tipped for a bright fu­ture by Con­nec­tion own­er David John Williams. Ac­tu­al­ly, Woo Ling's ar­rival at Con­nec­tion came through an­oth­er co­in­ci­dence, ac­cord­ing to Williams.

"Matthew's fa­ther worked along­side Stu­art Charles Fevri­er at a re­cent TTFF/Dutch coach­ing course and was im­pressed with what he saw. Then af­ter view­ing a train­ing ses­sion he was pleased with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and asked Stu­art if his son could join the train­ing. For­tu­nate­ly it was the Au­gust va­ca­tion and Stu­art in­vit­ed the young­ster. "We saw his abil­i­ty and the rest was his­to­ry. He trained with us for two months and he made up his mind that this is what he want­ed to do and W Con­nec­tion was the club he want­ed to be with. That's how it all start­ed," Williams re­called. "We're not afraid to put a play­er out there if he's 10 or 12. We go by a phi­los­o­phy that noth­ing is guar­an­teed in foot­ball and it's good op­por­tu­ni­ty for the young­ster to de­vel­op and show­case his tal­ent. He came in at a good time be­cause the av­er­age age of our team now is 20."

Woo Ling is not al­lowed to sign a con­tract at age 15 but is a reg­is­tered mem­ber of the club and al­ready Williams is in con­tact with Eu­ro­pean clubs and acad­e­mies re­gard­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a move over. He trained at Sun­der­land in 2010 af­ter be­ing se­lect­ed as one of the stand­outs from the Dig­i­cel clin­ics.

Williams said the sup­port of the play­er's par­ents has played a piv­otal role. "His par­ents have been great. They've been with him through­out and we have seen this first hand. Matthew's par­ents are wait­ing for him af­ter school at 2.30 pm and ac­com­pa­ny him to every train­ing ses­sion. He al­so has two sis­ters who are on foot­ball schol­ar­ships and I would love to see more par­ents be­hind their young­sters. The play­ers at W Con­nec­tion have all em­braced Matthew. He trains very hard on his own as well. We will con­tin­ue to work with him to en­sure he gets the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing," Williams said.

His­lop thrilled with ES­PN crick­et at­trac­tion

While view­ers, him­self in­clud­ed, may not have the chance to wit­ness T&T's foot­ballers in ac­tion on ES­PN, for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop is de­light­ed with the ex­cite­ment caused by ES­PN Caribbean's cov­er­age of re­gion­al crick­et and more­so the ex­ploits of the T&T team at the T20 Cham­pi­ons League in In­dia. His­lop is now a full time foot­ball an­a­lyst with ES­PN and said the com­pa­ny was now see­ing the ben­e­fits of in­vest­ing in sports cov­er­age in the re­gion. "Every­one is de­light­ed with way things have gone since ES­PN Caribbean came off the ground par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the crick­et cov­er­age. And for me I'm quite pleased to hear that the peo­ple back home have been fol­low­ing the na­tion­al crick­et team with keen in­ter­est via ES­PN. I'm sup­port­ing the boys to go as far as pos­si­ble," His­lop said.

"From the mo­ment ES­PN de­cid­ed to launch ES­PN Caribbean and fo­cus on the re­gion, one of the first things we knew we had to em­brace was crick­et . Our Gen­er­al Man­ag­er and Vice Pres­i­dent (ES­PN Caribbean) Bernard Stew­art un­der­stood the role that crick­et played and what it meant to the re­gion. "It was not a ques­tion of if we should do it but rather how we should do it. At the time the West In­dies crick­et rights were al­ready tied up but there was a way of do­ing it through the re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tions and I must say the WICB was very co­op­er­a­tive as they un­der­stood what ES­PN could bring to the ta­ble and we worked hand in hand." His­lop, adding that he was "en­joy­ing every bit of his time" at ES­PN said ul­ti­mate­ly ES­PN Caribbean would look to ven­ture in­to oth­er ar­eas of sport­ing cov­er­age in the re­gion. ES­PN are cur­rent rights hold­ers for all US Soc­cer in­ter­na­tion­al match­es and have set up base in Port of Spain for World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match­es be­tween the US and T&T in the past.

Saun­ders de­light­ed with Su­per League suc­cess

Joe Pub­lic Su­per League team head coach Dale Saun­ders was a sat­is­fied man at the end of 90 min­utes in the re­cent TTFF/BMo­bile Su­per League knock­out fi­nal at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um.He had just wit­nessed his team score a nar­row 2-1 win over Stoke­ly Vale. His side in­clud­ed na­tion­al trio Car­lyle Mitchell, Hay­den Tin­to and An­dre Tou­s­saint and oth­er play­ers who had been hop­ing for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball pri­or to the team's pull out from the 2011/2012 Pro League sea­son. "Win­ning is a mas­sive boost for the club and the play­ers," Saun­ders said. "Win­ning tro­phies and gen­er­al­ly play­ing foot­ball is what these play­ers dream about and some of them are very thank­ful for this op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the Su­per League and to come out here and win the fi­nal in To­ba­go. "Over­all I thought the com­pe­ti­tion was well or­gan­ised and the games were very in­ter­est­ing. This fi­nal was not an easy one but we stuck it out and the play­ers re­al­ly gave it their all. "We will now be aim­ing to take the League to keep Joe Pub­lic on the map," said Saun­ders, a for­mer mid­field­er who has two goals in 48 ap­pear­ances for T&T.