Nigel Si­mon

The Fi­fa Un­der-17 Women's World Cup T&T 2010 will see a colour­ful, en­er­getic and dis­tinct­ly Trin­bag­on­ian style, eight-minute open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 5.48 pm to­day. The brief cer­e­mo­ny, will fea­ture a cast of over 50 world-class artists, dancers, mu­si­cians and per­form­ers and takes place smack in the mid­dle of the two open­ing match­es in Group A. The 16-team tour­na­ment, gets go­ing with two dou­ble-head­ers, the oth­er be­ing in Group B at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, To­ba­go. In to­day's open­ing Group A match from 3 pm at Mu­cu­rapo, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Ko­rea DPR, the run­ners-up in Asian qual­i­fy­ing will meet Nige­ria, one of the three African qual­i­fiers. This will be fol­lowed by the brief open­ing cer­e­mo­ny fea­tur­ing award win­ning Dance Group, Shiv Shak­ti and renowned Mas pro­duc­er Ros­alind Gabriel. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, host coun­try T&T and Chile will face off in the oth­er Group A match from 6 pm.

Gates will be open from noon. Speak­ing ear­li­er this week, Chair­man of the Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee (LOC) and T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Pres­i­dent, Oliv­er Camps said the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny will be: "Dis­tinct­ly lo­cal, yet of a world class stan­dard." Camps added: "I be­lieve the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny is go­ing to be a su­per show­piece of the very best of this coun­try's arts, cul­ture, song and dance. Our guests will be treat­ed to an ar­ray of per­for­mances and at the end they should get a clear un­der­stand­ing of what it means to be Tri­ni."

Deputy CEO of the LOC Nata­ki Kerr said: "The Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny fea­tures a great line-up of artistes in our en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try and will show­case the tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy, wel­com­ing spir­it and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of our beau­ti­ful twin-is­land state. It will un­doubt­ed­ly be a true cel­e­bra­tion of our joy, life and en­er­gy." The show is be­ing co-pro­duced by the Min­istry of Cul­ture. Head­ing the list of lo­cal of­fi­cials who will be at­tend­ing to­day's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny will be Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port and Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, Jack Warn­er and Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Anil Roberts.

Roberts speak­ing yes­ter­day said he very pleased to see that the peo­ple of T&T had an­swered the call to come out and sup­port the young women. "I'm de­light­ed to see that T&T na­tion­als are buy­ing up the tick­ets quick­ly and get­ting their red jer­seys and na­tion­al flags in or­der to give the young women their full sup­port. "They have put in a lot of work and I'm very con­fi­dent that they will make T&T proud." Roberts was al­so full of praise for mem­bers of his Min­istry and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) for get­ting the venues up to a suit­able stan­dard. He said : "I must give cred­it to the peo­ple who have worked night and day so that what looked an al­most im­pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion to achieve be­cause of the de­plorable state of the venues have now be­come very ac­cept­able in or­der for us to host the world. "They have all worked ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly," end­ed Roberts.

For to­day's open­ing, Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter, a staunch sup­port­er of the women's game will not be present. The Fi­fa boss, who was in T&T on Wednes­day to at­tend the the launch of the Fi­fa/Con­ca­caf Women's Coach­ing Course at the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya is ex­pect­ed to re­turn on Sep­tem­ber 20, five days be­fore the fi­nal will be played at the same Mu­cu­rapo, venue. How­ev­er, sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of Fi­fa's Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee and two of its vice-pres­i­dents are ex­pect­ed to at­tend the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. The high pro­file del­e­ga­tion in­cludes vice-pres­i­dent Dr MJ Chung and Rey­nald Temarii along with ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers, Ri­car­do Ter­ra Teix­eira, Ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber and deputy chair­man of the Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee Dr Adamus Adamu and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Jerome Val­cke. Dr Chung and Dr Adamu ar­rived in T&T on Thurs­day while the rest of the del­e­ga­tion is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive to­day.