Wesley "Pepe" Gomes, coach of this country's "Calypso Girls" says sports and the national athletes involved need to be given a lot more respect when it comes to making facilities available for training.
Gomes was speaking yesterday after he led the tenth world ranked 'Calypso Spikers" to a 53-46 defeat of ninth ranked Barbados to finish as winners of the seven-team 14th edition of the International Netball Federation (INF) Americas Regional Qualifying Tournament to the INF Netball World Cup at SAIT Polytechnic, Alberta, Canada on Monday night.
Prior their final match, both T&T and Barbados had already secured places at the World Cup to be held in Sydney, Australia next year where they will join the reigning holders and ten-time champions Australia, New Zealand, England, the top three teams in the world along with Jamaica, South Africa, Wales, Scotland, Fiji and Samoa as well as two teams each from the Asian and African qualify tournaments in the 16-team competition.
And with the win, T&T ended with a perfect 6-0 record with other victories against USA (68-28), Cayman Islands (68-18), Canada (59-38), Argentina (116-11) and Grenada (82-31).
The tournament win also came as great relief to the locals and coach Gomes after they endured a disappointing campaign at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, with a tenth placed finish.
T&T battled past Barbados 38-37 in its opener, but then suffered losses in its next five matches against South Africa (40-56), Wales (31-50), Australia (34-69), England (24-70) and against Scotland, 28-46 in the ninth placed playoff.
Commenting on the outcome of both recent tournaments, Gomes said he was quite satisfied with the level of play from the players in Canada.
"We have to admit the level at the Commonwealth Games was much higher than in Canada, but in terms of how we performed as a unit, it was very pleasing and even caught the attention of former Australian standout Jill Mc Intosh, who has returned as Technical Director of the Jamaica women's team for a second time.
Looking ahead, Gomes said his team now has to fill the void left by long-serving duo Anastacia Wilson and Anika La Roche-Brice, who decided to call time on their international careers at the conclusion of the tournament in Canada.
"There is always room for young talent and hopefully we will be able to fill the void left by retiring players quickly, but we have a problem in that the younger players don't come out to training sessions.
At the same time, the T&T coach said he was not discarding his senior players, providing they can still show they are capable enough to compete at the international level.
"We have some senior players who people may think need to hang up their careers as well, but I have no problem because once they show the same commitment and energy and perform at a high standard they will be considered for national selection, " stated Gomes.
Gomes also stressed another major problem facing the sport was getting facilities made available to the national team for training.
"Like so many other national sports we are always fighting for a place to train, not only with other sport, but sometimes other activities not related to sport.
He said, "The country always demand good results from all their athletes, but are facing serious problems in getting facilities made available to us."
With his long-term focus being the World Cup, Gomes said the team will take three weeks off after which he wants to take a look at some younger players.
"We need to get a good group of young players into the mix if we hope to stay relevant as a country in the sport.
As part of the team's preparations for the World Cup, the local women are to compete in three international series from early next year.
Gomes said: "We are hoping to have some international matches in January while there is an invite on the table for us to go back to Europe to face some of the teams that will be involved in the European Netball Championships in May as well as a Tri-Series with host Jamaica and England in May, so we just have to wait and see."