Carl­ton St Clair, for­mer Bel­mont Sec­ondary and na­tion­al un­der-19 play­er will trav­el to Guyana to­day with the T&T men's na­tion­al rug­by team. The 20-year-old St Clair, a mem­ber of the 36-man train­ing squad, re­ceived the call late yes­ter­day from Cur­tis Nero, TTR­FU se­lec­tion com­mit­tee chair­man and team man­ag­er. St Clair was one of on­ly two play­ers omit­ted from the cru­cial Guyana en­counter who at­tend­ed train­ing on Wednes­day morn­ing. The oth­er play­er Aasan Lewis, fly half/cen­tre, is on the in­jured list.

St Clair is re­plac­ing Fe­li­cian Guer­ra who con­firmed Wednes­day he is un­avail­able for the match. "When the train­ing squad was an­nounced two months ago, the play­ers were told that even though they may not be se­lect­ed, it was im­per­a­tive that every­one stayed com­mit­ted, men­tal­ly tough and dis­ci­plined. There will be dis­ap­point­ment, ad­ver­si­ty, mis­takes and fail­ures but no rug­by team striv­ing to be num­ber one can func­tion on the ba­sis of a 22-man squad." A for­ward who can play ei­ther as a hook­er or flanker, St Clair re­places Guer­ra, an ex­pe­ri­enced and cool head­ed cam­paign­er.