Na­tion­al Un­der-17 foot­ball coach Shawn Coop­er is brac­ing for an even tougher con­test against their Ja­maican coun­ter­parts from 10 am Sun­day in game two of the in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly tour of Ja­maica ahead of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Cham­pi­onships next year.

The Ju­nior War­riors over­came their re­gion­al ri­val by a goal to nil in the first meet­ing on Thurs­day at the Cap­tain Ho­race Bur­rell Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, UWI, Mona Cam­pus, cour­tesy of Akel Vesprey late in the match.

But yes­ter­day Coop­er said while he was pleased with the re­sult both he and his his staff will have to sit to de­cide on an ap­pro­pri­ate ap­proach against their op­po­nents who are sup­posed to be strength­ened by the in­clu­sion of more over­seas-based play­ers on the Ja­maican ros­ter.

Coop­er said the amount of play­ers to be in­clud­ed in the ros­ter, will bring to nine, the num­ber of out­side play­ers on their team. “ We are very pleased with the boys’ per­for­mance and the re­sult. Clear­ly, some of them were ner­vous in their first in­ter­na­tion­al game but they stuck to their task and in the end, they got the vic­to­ry,” Coop­er said.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we would like to im­prove in cer­tain ar­eas of the game as they con­tin­ue this de­vel­op­ment phase. We have a cou­ple of knocks which were ex­pect­ed in a game against our main ri­val in the Caribbean. The game will be even tougher to­mor­row as they have brought in more US-born play­ers in their dri­ve to al­so im­prove their squad for the fu­ture. This will take that tal­ly by about nine.”

“The staff will sit and de­cide on how we will ap­proach the game,” Coop­er ex­plained.

The match­es come on the heels of a pre­vi­ous US tour last month in which the team was sched­uled to play three match­es, in­clu­sive of a Com­bined match that was set to fea­ture US play­ers try­ing to seal a place on the T&T team. That tour was can­celed due to a lack of fund­ing by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

Mean­while, of­fi­cials have said that the tour to Ja­maica by the T&T squad is in line with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s ap­pli­ca­tion to the FI­FA Tal­ent De­vel­op­ment Scheme (TDS) which aims to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al re­sources to Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions for the elite youth na­tion­al teams.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands al­so that the trip marks a piv­otal step to­wards the T&T Un­der-17s quest to qual­i­fy for the FI­FA Un­der-17 World Cup in 2025.