T&T’s se­nior So­ca War­riors has been left short-hand­ed for its CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League open­ing match against Nicaragua af­ter de­fend­er Alvin Jones, mid­field­ers Noah Pow­der and Ne­veal Hack­shaw and goal­keep­er Jabari St Hillaire did not make the trip for var­i­ous rea­sons. The team ar­rived in Man­agua, Nicaragua on Wednes­day and ahead of Fri­day’s open­ing Con­ca­caf Na­tions League en­counter with Nicaragua.

The team’s head coach An­gus Eve will al­so miss the en­counter af­ter he was un­able to trav­el due to a per­son­al fam­i­ly emer­gency.

Both Jones of For­ward Madi­son in the USA and St Hillaire of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers did not re­veal their on­line trav­el health pass ap­proval from the Nicaraguan Health Au­thor­i­ty in time to board the flight which de­part­ed Pi­ar­co on Tues­day, while Pow­der and Hack­shaw who both play for In­dy Eleven in the USA al­so did not re­ceive their PCR Re­sults in the Unit­ed States with­in the re­quired time nec­es­sary to re­ceive sim­i­lar ap­proval for their en­try in­to Nicaragua.

The play­ers would have ar­rived on Fri­day evening, mere hours be­fore the 8pm kick-off of the match and Eve and his staff felt it was there­fore un­fit­ting to have them trav­el to Man­agua. All four play­ers will join the team in Trinidad for Mon­day’s match against the Ba­hamas at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo.

In Eve’s ab­sence, as­sis­tant coach Reynold Car­ring­ton will take charge of the team for Fri­day’s match which will be broad­cast live on Flow Sports main chan­nel from 10 pm T&T Time.

Ac­cord­ing to as­sis­tant coach Car­ring­ton yes­ter­day, “The task is the same and we re­main up­beat and com­mit­ted to that task. We have 19 ca­pa­ble play­ers with loads of ex­pe­ri­ence and abil­i­ty with the over­seas and home-based play­ers in the mix. The im­por­tant thing is for us to re­main fo­cused and un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the match and al­so want to get a pos­i­tive start to the cam­paign on Fri­day.”

Cos­ta Ri­can-based de­fend­er Aubrey David who ar­rived to join the squad in Man­agua on Wednes­day morn­ing is al­so an­tic­i­pat­ing the start of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League which al­so serves as qual­i­fiers for the 2023 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.

“First up, it’s al­ways an ho­n­our to get called up to rep­re­sent the na­tion­al team re­gard­less of the oc­ca­sion or the chal­lenges. I’m ex­cit­ed to be here. I know the boys are all look­ing for­ward to it be­cause we’ve made some progress over the past few months and the spir­it and mo­men­tum from the last two match­es against Bar­ba­dos and Guyana were ex­cel­lent. This is some­thing we’ll be look­ing to take in­to these up­com­ing match­es. “It’s al­so great to have ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers such as Jo­evin (Jones), Shel­don Bateau and Le­ston Paul back in the squad. Over­all we have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to go in there and put on a per­for­mance that can hope­ful­ly give us a win­ning start be­fore we head home to Ba­hamas,” David said.

From the 28-man squad five play­ers - Re­al Gill, Ka­heim Thomas, Jabari Mitchell, Kevon God­dard and Du­ane Muck­ette re­mained in T&T.

Fol­low­ing the Nicaragua game, they will re­turn home to face the Ba­hamas at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on June 6 be­fore com­plet­ing the first round of match­es against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines on June 10. They will then be­gin the sec­ond round on June 13 against the Vin­cen­tians.