Na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick is prais­ing his play­ers af­ter Tues­day’s 2-0 win over Group F win­ners St Kitts & Nevis in the CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fiers.

Fen­wick and his play­ers were the sub­jects of bru­tal crit­i­cisms fol­low­ing a goal­less draw with re­gion­al foot­ball min­nows Ba­hamas last Sat­ur­day which even­tu­al­ly put T&T out of the qual­i­fiers in on­ly the first round. There have since been calls for Fen­wick, a for­mer Eng­land na­tion­al play­er to be fired and some of the play­ers to be re­placed mov­ing ahead in the game.

But on Tues­day the So­ca War­riors pro­duced a com­mand­ing per­for­mance that re­al­ly should have re­sult­ed in more than two goals on the night, from mid­field­er Du­ane Muck­ette in the 35th minute and cap­tain Khaleem Hy­land in the 74th at the Es­ta­dio Al­ter­no del Cen­tro Juan Pablo Duarte in the Do­mini­ca Re­pub­lic, ac­cept­ing the fact that the Kit­ti­tians dubbed the Sug­ar Boyz have ad­vanced out of the group with nine points from four match­es and just one loss.

The win for T&T con­fined St Kitts & Nevis team to its first loss of the qual­i­fiers and as­sured T&T se­cured the run­ner-up spot on eight points, with two wins and as many drawn games.

Fen­wick, a for­mer cen­tral de­fend­er, who has, in earnest, be­gan his prepa­ra­tions for the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup which starts on Ju­ly 2 against Montser­rat in the USA, said his play­ers pro­duced a grit­ty, yet classy dis­play which tells of the qual­i­ty that ex­ists in the team: “Yes well ob­vi­ous­ly I am very pleased with the re­sult, that’s four games away from home, two vic­to­ries, two draws. We ob­vi­ous­ly are very dis­ap­point­ed we’re not ad­vanc­ing to the next round of the World Cup Qual­i­fiers, but I am proud of my play­ers tonight, the per­for­mance, the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, de­spite all the di­vi­sions we’ve got in T&T foot­ball. Lack of fi­nanc­ing, lack of sup­port, the boys have dug deep and you can’t ar­gue be­ing away from home for four games and play­ing with­out a de­feat.”

The 61-year-old who was ap­point­ed na­tion­al coach in Jan­u­ary 2020 said: “I thought we dom­i­nat­ed the game, par­tic­u­lar­ly the first half, every­thing was com­ing through us. I felt we should have scored more goals. We had good op­por­tu­ni­ties, we had a penal­ty ap­peal that was turned down by VAR, al­though we haven’t got VAR at the sta­di­um, but again the play­ers were mag­nif­i­cent. They stuck to the task, they kept their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, we moved the ball quick­ly, we cre­at­ed good chances, the game should have had a more com­fort­able re­sult.”

Fen­wick re­mind­ed the me­dia that his team is far from where it should be be­cause of the trou­bles tak­ing place in lo­cal foot­ball.

He point­ed out: “What you’ve got to rec­og­nize is that we’ve got ter­ri­ble chal­lenges back in T&T. The Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee is deal­ing with debts around the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. That means we’ve had very lit­tle if any sup­port for the past 18 months. We’ve had no friend­ly games, we’ve had no prepa­ra­tion for these World Cup qual­i­fiers, and it has been very dif­fi­cult for the play­ers.

You look at the per­for­mance of Khaleem Hy­land, the team cap­tain, he was out­stand­ing in the mid­dle of the park. That’s the sort of qual­i­ty we’ve got in the team and they’re miss­ing out on op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause the as­so­ci­a­tion is in such a mess.”

Mean­while, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in a re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed that FI­FA has in­formed it that all pos­si­ble dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion re­lat­ed to a protest lodged by the Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion over the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of play­er An­dre Bou­caud in Group F World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match­es in March have been dis­missed.

The Guyana Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFA) had stat­ed that fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion with its le­gal team that it had writ­ten FI­FA, urg­ing the glob­al gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball to con­sid­er its case. “We have tak­en this mat­ter very se­ri­ous­ly and have pre­sent­ed our find­ings to FI­FA– that Bou­caud was in­el­i­gi­ble to play for Trinidad and To­ba­go as a reg­is­tered in­ter­me­di­ary with the Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

The GFF al­so point­ed out that it be­lieved that Bou­caud was in­el­i­gi­ble for se­lec­tion as a reg­is­tered in­ter­me­di­ary and, as such, that any points se­cured by Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing any re­lat­ed FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion match­es should be for­feit­ed.

As it is now, nei­ther Bou­caud nor the T&TFA will face any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion by FI­FA.