A draw will be suf­fi­cient in seal­ing a spot in the next round of 2015 Rug­by World Cup qual­i­fiers, when the T&T's Ca­lyp­so War­riors tack­les bit­ter ri­vals Guyana, at the lat­ter team's na­tion­al sta­di­um, in Prov­i­dence, George­town, this af­ter­noon from 4 pm. The de­ci­sive and fi­nal North Amer­i­can and Caribbean Rug­by As­so­ci­a­tion (NACRA) Pool B Round Two fix­ture, will de­ter­mine a spot in the next round of qual­i­fiers against the win­ner of the north­ern Caribbean re­gion group, which fea­tures Cay­man Is­lands, Ba­hamas and Caribbean cham­pi­ons Bermu­da. The win­ner of the fol­low­ing play-off, will go up against a team from South Amer­i­ca. Guyana is in a must-win sit­u­a­tion, af­ter re­cent­ly be­ing held to a 10-10 draw against Bar­ba­dos, a team which T&T de­feat­ed con­vinc­ing­ly, 32-3, at St Mary's Col­lege Ground, Ser­pen­tine Road, ear­ly last month. For­tu­nate­ly for T&T, it has the lux­u­ry of be­ing able to lose the match and still ad­vance, but the team must do so by less than sev­en points. If Guyana wins the match by sev­en points or more, T&T will be elim­i­nat­ed and Guyana will ad­vance.

Both teams, how­ev­er, will go in­to the match con­fi­dent; T&T more-so, fol­low­ing its as­sertive dis­play against the Bar­ba­di­ans, while Guyana will re­mem­ber its last out­ing against T&T, just over a year ago, which it won by two points. T&T cur­rent­ly stands at 50th in the world 15s rank­ings, nine spots su­pe­ri­or to its clos­est chal­lenger in the re­gion, Guyana, which is present­ly in 59th place. The Ca­lyp­so War­riors' south­ern Caribbean ad­ver­sary will be lift­ed with the re­turn of sev­er­al key play­ers in Claudius Butts, Kevin McKen­zie and Ronald May­ers, all three of whom were un­avail­able for the team's draw against Bar­ba­dos. T&T, mean­while, has made two late switch­es, with both in­side-cen­tre An­drew Tay­lor and Roy­alians' hook­er Fe­li­cian Guer­ra be­ing re­placed in like-for-like fash­ion by Kel­son Fi­garo of Roy­alians and Har­vard's Carl­ton St Clair, re­spec­tiv­el. Jonathan O'Con­nor will again lead the team as cap­tain as he did in the pre­vi­ous en­counter, af­ter he took over for now-vice-cap­tain Adam Fred­er­ick. The T&T team, with the ex­cep­tion of the two play­ers, is a car­bon copy of the same team which fared strong­ly against Bar­ba­dos in the last out­ing, fea­tur­ing both sol­id, tac­ti­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers and younger ones with blis­ter­ing pace and cre­ative tech­nique.

Trav­el­ing with the 22-man squad are head coach Lar­ry Mendez, as­sis­tant coach Dale Trot­man, the team's train­er Derek Ash­by and man­ag­er and chair­man of the Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee Cur­tis Nero. The team ar­rived in Guyana yes­ter­day morn­ing. Pres­i­dent of the T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union (T&TR­FU) Leslie Fi­garo was al­so en route to Guyana last evening. Be­fore tak­ing to Guyana, Nero, a for­mer na­tion­al stand-out, ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the younger play­ers to bring home a pos­i­tive re­sult. "They beat us by two points last year in our back­yard. We (how­ev­er) are up for the fight this year," he said. Nero and coach Mendez will be hop­ing that the play­ers dis­play a sim­i­lar­ly dom­i­nant ap­proach, which se­cured T&T the flat­ter­ing score­line against the Bar­ba­di­ans, but with­out the nu­mer­ous am­a­teur er­rors, which re­sult­ed in the War­riors fail­ing to cap­i­talise on the el­e­men­tary counter-at­tack, par­tic­u­lar­ly with dropped catch­es, and ul­ti­mate­ly more tries. In T&T's last World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign for the 2011 tour­na­ment, the War­riors reached as far as the Re­gion­al play-offs against South Amer­i­ca's Brazil, los­ing both legs, in 2008. T&T, how­ev­er, ad­vanced to its play-off with Brazil, af­ter a win in the ini­tial Caribbean Re­gion­al Cham­pi­onships, staged just be­fore, and de­feat­ed the Cay­man Is­lands (39-12) in the quar­ter-fi­nal, Bar­ba­dos 56-0 in the se­mi-fi­nal and Guyana 40-24 in the fi­nal.

T&T SQUAD

For­wards

Vice-cap­tain Adam Fred­er­ick (North­ern), John Hill (Har­vard), Miguel Lara (Caribs), Ernest Wright (Caribs), Ja­mal Clark (Caribs), Keis­hon Walk­er (To­ba­go), Wayne Kel­ly (Har­vard/UTT), Row­ell Gor­don (Har­vard), Carl­ton St Clair (Har­vard), Ja­son Joseph (Po­lice), Jesse Richards (UWI), Kurt Quashie (Caribs).

Backs

Cap­tain Jonathan O'Con­nor (North­ern), Don Ro­jas (Caribs), Joseph Quashie (Har­vard/UTT), Ja­son Clark (Caribs), Ag­boola Sil­ver­thorne (Rain­bow), James Phillip (Roy­alians), Justin McLean (North­ern), Tariq Cheekes (Har­vard), Kel­son Fi­garo (Roy­alians), Daryl Scott (Rain­bow).

Head Coach: Lar­ry Mendez

As­sis­tant Coach: Dale Trot­man

Train­er: Derek Ash­by

Man­ag­er: Cur­tis Nero