T&T men's foot­ball team will, af­ter all, de­part for St Kitts/Nevis on Mon­day to par­tic­i­pate in the open­ing phase of the Caribbean Cup at Warn­er Park in St Kitt's. This was con­firmed af­ter the Min­istry of Sport told T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) of­fi­cials at an emer­gency meet­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing that the Min­istry would cov­er the ex­pens­es to en­sure the eight-time Caribbean cham­pi­ons ap­pear at the 2012 edi­tion of the tour­na­ment. The TTFF was in­vit­ed to the meet­ing which took place at 10.30 am at the of­fice of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport, Ash­win Creed, at the Sport Min­istry's of­fices. Creed met with TTFF gen­er­al sec­re­tary Richard Gro­den, TTFF tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal and team ad­min­is­tra­tor William Wal­lace.

Na­tion­al head coach Hut­son Charles con­tin­ued the prepa­ra­tion of his team with a two-hour ses­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um. Charles will an­nounce his 20-man squad to­day and will have a fi­nal train­ing ses­sion on home soil in­clud­ing a train­ing match against W Con­nec­tion from 9 am to­mor­row at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma. The So­ca War­riors will have to do with­out the ser­vices of Khaleem Hy­land who suf­fered a ham­string in­jury dur­ing the warm-up ahead of Rac­ing Genk's UE­FA Eu­ropa League fix­ture ver­sus FC Basel on Thurs­day. Colum­bus Crew de­fend­er Julius James is al­so out with a shoul­der in­jury while Kevin Moli­no is un­avail­able.

T&T will how­ev­er have US-based duo Keon Daniel and Car­lyle Mitchell for the three-match tour­na­ment as well as Viet­nam-based play­ers Hugh­tun Hec­tor and Willis Plaza. T&T plays its open­ing match of Group 5 on Wednes­day from 5 pm against French Guyana at Warn­er Park. The lo­cal foot­ball team will al­so face An­guil­la and host St Kitts/Nevis. The win­ners from each of the five groups along with the run­ners-up from Groups 1-3 will ad­vance to the sec­ond round.

The best run­ner-up from ei­ther Group 4 or Group 5 al­so will ad­vance. The sec­ond round will com­prise three groups of four teams with Grena­da, Guade­loupe and Cu­ba seed­ed in one of the groups. The top two teams from each sec­ond round group will ad­vance to the fi­nals De­cem­ber 3-16 in An­tigua & Bar­bu­da with the host na­tion and two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Ja­maica. Four teams will qual­i­fy for next year's Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.

Re­sults

Group 5

At Bas­seterre, St Kitts

Oc­to­ber 10

French Guyana vs T&T, 5 pm

St Kitts & Nevis vs An­guil­la, 7 pm

Oc­to­ber 12

An­guil­la vs T&T, 5 pm

St Kitts & Nevis vs French Guyana, 7 pm

Oc­to­ber 14

French Guyana vs An­guil­la, 5 pm

St Kitts & Nevis vs T&T, 7 pm.