Shaun Fuentes

Con­sid­er­ing the fact that T&T is go­ing through a bleak pe­ri­od on the in­ter­na­tion­al front since its ex­it from the 2014 World Cup cam­paign last No­vem­ber, any­one could prob­a­bly get away with claim­ing that the coun­try will grasp at pos­si­bly every op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain some­thing. From kit spon­sors to in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­nents and now play­ers, all feel that the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) and its na­tion­al teams have ab­solute­ly no bar­gain­ing pow­er. And you can't blame them right? Kit man­u­fac­tur­ers Jo­ma re­cent­ly en­tered in­to an agree­ment with the TTFF while Reebok has al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est in get­ting in­volved to some ex­tent. Some of the high­er ranked Con­ca­caf na­tions don't par­tic­u­lar­ly see any ab­solute need to play T&T these days. And now we have Scot­tish-born Kil­marnock strik­er Ro­ry McKen­zie in the UK Me­dia be­ing linked to in­ter­est from T&T. McKen­zie's grand­moth­er is Trinidad-born and some weeks ago his agent con­tact­ed the TTFF via e-mail in­di­cat­ing his play­er's in­ter­est in rep­re­sent­ing T&T and re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on how the young strik­er could earn a call-up.

Sky Sports this week states though that it was in­stead the na­tion­al team that was af­ter McKen­zie, quot­ing agent Gor­don Reid: "There is an in­ter­est from T&T. But we must stress Ro­ry has not ac­cept­ed or even tak­en the mat­ter fur­ther. It is flat­ter­ing, of course, but at the mo­ment he is con­cen­trat­ing on his Kil­marnock fu­ture." I can con­firm though that Reid was first to make his play­er avail­able and the TTFF had no pri­or knowl­edge of the play­er's el­i­gi­bil­i­ty. For the sake of T&T foot­ball though, hope­ful­ly the 18-year-old who has played for Scot­land Un­der-19s does in fact get the chance to im­press the T&T coach­ing staff. Cana­di­an-born An­tho­ny Ba­hadur, who has been with the Cana­di­an U23s has al­so gone on record stat­ing that if Stephen Hart does not call him to the cur­rent Cana­da se­nior team then he will con­sid­er play­ing for T&T, home coun­try of his fa­ther. The se­nior team mean­time, in the midst of prepa­ra­tions for the 2012 Caribbean Cup, re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion to play Colom­bia on Oc­to­ber 16. That would def­i­nite­ly be a much wel­comed en­counter for the "So­ca War­riors." The next few months will prove to be cru­cial to T&T's at­tempts to get its foot­ball house in or­der as it makes bold steps to shake off the dis­ap­point­ments of an ear­ly 2014 ex­it. That aside, na­tion­al train­er Gilbert Bateau de­serves cred­it for per­sist­ing over the years with sons Sean and Shel­don, both ex-na­tion­al youth team play­ers with the lat­ter bring­ing joy to the fam­i­ly when he com­plet­ed his move to Bel­gium a week ago.

Bateau has worked tire­less­ly with sev­er­al youth play­ers in the last decade. I share with you Gilbert's note to his son:

"Shel­don con­grat­u­la­tions. I said when you leave Trinidad don't look back. Fol­low your dreams. This is what you want­ed and with God's help and your hard work you got it. This jour­ney has just start­ed. I've been told by al­most every­body the strides you have made over the years as if I didn't know and I said I did not think I should tell you just yet be­cause the time wasn't right. I think now is the right time to tell you how proud I am as a fa­ther to watch you come through the years," Bateau wrote in a note to his son on the day he signed the con­tract in Bel­gium.

Pride of St Ann's

For too long there have been calls for lo­cal pro­fes­sion­al clubs to be more com­mu­ni­ty ori­ent­ed in or­der for the Pro League to at­tract a larg­er fan base. The emer­gence of Cen­tral FC is a step in the right di­rec­tion but the strug­gle con­tin­ues by the cur­rent clubs that make up the League when it comes to at­tract­ing even 500 fans at a week­ly home game. One par­tic­u­lar North­ern club de­serves men­tion though for main­tain­ing the fight over the years. St Ann's Rangers, for­mer­ly Su­per­star Rangers, is a com­mu­ni­ty-based club in the St Ann's, Cas­cade, Holo­lo and Bel­mont ar­eas that has been in ex­is­tence for 45 years and is home to over 100 play­ers from the se­nior to youth lev­el, a to­tal of some six teams.

Chair­man Richard Fakoory and his com­mit­ted team al­so boast of hav­ing sev­er­al for­mer and cur­rent na­tion­al play­ers pass through its set up such as Clay­ton Mor­ris, Er­rol Mc­Far­lane, Arnold Dwari­ka, Ker­wyn Jem­mot, Shel­don Bateau, Au­r­tis Whit­ley, Hec­tor Sam, Clay­ton Ince, Gary Glas­gow, An­ton Pierre and Mar­vin Faustin among oth­ers. The club, at one time hav­ing ex-FI­FA VP Jack Warn­er as a spon­sor, con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with­out a ma­jor spon­sor and very lit­tle from the gates this year, so much that Fakoory has come very close to drop­ping out of the Pro League. They have made a strong start to the cur­rent sea­son, oust­ing North East Stars last Fri­day in the FCB Cup. I will leave the St Ann's clan with the fol­low­ing quote: "The dif­fer­ence be­tween per­se­ver­ance and ob­sti­na­cy is, that one of­ten comes from a strong will, and the oth­er from a strong won't." For St Ann's sake, hope­ful­ly suc­cess and sta­bil­i­ty will come in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for the So­ca War­riors/TTFF. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Pro­Look2006