Nigel Si­mon

US-born T&T So­ca Princess­es coach Randy Wal­drum says his team will en­ter the in­au­gur­al eight-team Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Women's Cup in an at­tack­ing frame of mind when it face off with St Kitts/Nevis in the sec­ond match of a Group B dou­ble-head­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 7.15 pm tonight.

In the open­ing match of the group, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da will do bat­tle with Mar­tinique from 5 pm.For tonight's match, the 55-year-old Wal­drum, who en­joyed a stel­lar ca­reer as the women's coach of Notre Dame Uni­ver­si­ty will not be avail­able as his cur­rent US Women's Soc­cer League club, Hous­ton Dash has a re-sched­ule fix­ture.

And in his place, for­mer na­tion­al women's youth and se­nior team coach Mar­lon Charles, who was axed, and then re-hired a few months back to work as an as­sis­tant to the team will as­sume the head coach­ing role be­fore Wal­drum links up with the na­tion­al team ahead of Fri­day's sec­ond group match ver­sus An­tigua & Bar­bu­da at the same venue, al­so from 7.15 pm.

While the So­ca Princess­es were on a bye in the CFU first round qual­i­fiers and had to make do with a cou­ple friend­lies against Venezuela and the Hous­ton-camp, St Kitts/Nevis had wins over Cay­man Is­lands (5-0) and Turks & Caicos (4-0) be­fore a 1-3 loss to Bermu­da in their Group Three de­cider.

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da topped Group One with sim­i­lar 1-0 tri­umphs over US Vir­gin Is­lands, Aru­ba and St Vin­cent and The Grenadines while Mar­tinique won Group Two af­ter beat­ing Bar­ba­dos 3-1 and draw­ing 1-1 with Puer­to Ri­co.Speak­ing from Hous­ton to T&TFA Me­dia, Wal­drum who com­plet­ed the train­ing camp with the T&T squad on Sat­ur­day said he ex­pects that cap­tain Maylee At­tin-John­son and her team­mates will be fir­ing on all cylin­ders against St Kitts/Nevis.

"We want to take on a very at­tack­ing men­tal­i­ty right from the open­ing game. I love at­tack­ing foot­ball, and feel that we have the per­son­nel to play in this man­ner through­out the CFU matchess.

There will be times lat­er on when we have to drop deep­er and play off the counter, but at the CFU lev­el we'll want to at­tack our op­po­nents," Wal­drum said on Mon­day night.

With re­gards to the lo­cal squad, Wal­drum, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked with the na­tion­al Un­der-17 women's team said he was quite pleased with the com­po­si­tion which in­cludes sev­en North Amer­i­can-based play­ers.

"Over­all I'm pret­ty hap­py with the squad I se­lect­ed. They are cer­tain­ly the best 20 that are avail­able to us right now. I think there were some good play­ers left off the squad that sim­ply are not fit enough at the mo­ment but I'll work with them af­ter the CFUs to im­prove this.So there are some play­ers not se­lect­ed who may ul­ti­mate­ly be in the Con­ca­caf qual­i­fiers, and there are some play­ers who were not avail­able for se­lec­tion at this time with their re­spec­tive clubs, etc. The good thing is the ros­ter evolves and it will help to keep all the play­ers in the mood to fight for their po­si­tions on the ros­ter, and that is when you make im­prove­ments," Wal­drum con­tin­ued.

Wal­drum added that there are some more as­pects of T&T's game that needs work­ing on but the main fo­cus is to qual­i­fy from the CFU Fi­nals for the Con­ca­caf Fi­nal round in the Unit­ed States to­wards the Fi­fa Women's World Cup in Cana­da next year."The im­por­tant thing now is to qual­i­fy through the CFU's, and then we'll have more time to hone in on these var­i­ous el­e­ments of our game.Seat­tle Sounders pro­lif­ic for­ward Ken­nya "Yaya" Cord­ner, the reign­ing T&T Foot­ball As­so­caition "Women's Play­er of the Year" will lead the So­ca Princess­es at­tack with vet­er­an Tasha St Louis.

Boston Break­ers goal­keep­er Kimi­ka Forbes is al­so in the mix along with the likes of Der­nelle Mas­cal of Texas Gulf Coast, Cana­di­an-born de­fend­er Arin King, Rhea Bel­grave of West Texas Uni­ver­si­ty and Lau­ryn Hutchin­son of Rich­mond Unit­ed. For­mer Un­der-20 cap­tain Mari­ah Shade of Petrotrin and tal­ent­ed for­ward Jo-Marie Lewis of St Ann's Rangers have al­so made the cut while Khade­sha Debe­sette has been ruled out by in­jury and her spot tak­en by US-based winger Tay­lor Mims.

At the end round-robin play in both pools, the top teams will meet in the fi­nal on Au­gust 26 at Mu­cu­rapo while the sec­ond placed teams in each group face off for third with all four cer­tain of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment.Al­ready through to the Con­ca­caf round are host USA and Mex­i­co, who both re­ceived byes where they will be joined by Cos­ta Ri­ca and Guatemala, the win­ner and run­ner-up of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca qual­i­fy­ing.

At the end of the Con­ca­caf qual­i­fiers, both fi­nal­ists and the third placed team will qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly to next year's Women's World Cup while the fourth placed team will meet the third placed team from Con­m­bol (South Amer­i­ca) for an ad­di­tion­al World Cup berth.Ad­mis­sion to the CFU match­es for each match day is $20 while the fi­nal which will be a dou­ble head­er in­clud­ing the third place play­off will be $50.

Last night, Group A kicked off with a dou­ble-head­er at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va with Ja­maica and Puer­to Ri­co fac­ing off in the open­er fol­lowed by Haiti and Bermu­da while to­mor­row its re­sumes with an­oth­er dou­ble-head­er at Cou­va from 5pm.In the first match, Bermu­da tack­les Ja­maica from 5pm and Haiti meets Ja­maica from 7.15 pm.