John Bar­ry Nusum has hand­ed Bermu­da a mas­sive boost ahead of their World Cup qual­i­fy­ing show­down against Trinidad, de­clar­ing: "I'm fit and rar­ing to go." Nusum was T&T's chief tor­men­tor when Bermu­da shocked the So­ca War­riors in their own back­yard three years ago, scor­ing twice to leapfrog Shaun Goater as the Is­land's top scor­er in qual­i­fiers. The burly strik­er, who in­sists he has ful­ly re­cov­ered from a long-term knee in­jury, is now ready to make a re­turn to his hap­py hunt­ing ground when the Gombey War­riors trav­el to Trinidad next month. "I will al­ways be avail­able to rep­re­sent my coun­try if called up­on." said the for­mer in­door soc­cer pro­fes­sion­al. "I'm def­i­nite­ly in­ter­est­ed so we will see what hap­pens; I will be go­ing train­ing to see what's go­ing on."

Nusum's dress­ing room pres­ence could be al­most as im­por­tant as his in­flu­ence on the pitch, such is the es­teem he is held in among his younger team-mates. Al­though he ac­cepts he too will have to work hard for his start­ing place, re­gard­less of his past achieve­ments. "It would be great to get back in the team, but at the same time I know there are a lot of younger guys that are hun­gry right now and want to be in­volved," said the Wolves coach. "Re­gard­less of my name and so forth, I will still need to put in the work." Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the 30-year-old has fond mem­o­ries of Bermu­da's mem­o­rable 2-1 vic­to­ry at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um in 2008, when he bruised and bat­tered the So­ca War­riors de­fend­ers to etch his name in­to the lo­cal foot­ball folk­lore.

Frus­trat­ing­ly for Nusum, he was car­ry­ing a ham­string in­jury in the re­turn leg, which Bermu­da lost 2-1, and was un­able to re­peat his hero­ics. "Trinidad was a great time for all those in­volved we played well against them," said Nusum. "We all felt hard done by in the home leg, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter they got the sec­ond goal, know­ing the po­si­tion we were in and that we're head­ing to the next round." Nusum be­lieves it's of para­mount im­por­tance the Bermu­da Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion names a new na­tion­al team coach as soon as pos­si­ble, with the Trinidad open­er just a few weeks away. "We're on back foot in the sense that we haven't named our coach or squad yet, but for the most part we have the nec­es­sary tools to go out and have a re­al go at get­ting to the next round," he said. "We shouldn't feel in­fe­ri­or to any­one else in the group be­cause we all start at the same po­si­tion."