There shall be no at­tempt­ing to dress up what hap­pened dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber-Oc­to­ber in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow. Trinidad and To­ba­go dropped points, failed to win any of its four match­es and suf­fered rel­e­ga­tion from League A of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League.

It is not where we want­ed to fin­ish and it is not a re­sult that should be brushed aside sim­ply be­cause there were in­juries, sus­pen­sions and oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties along the way. But even in a dis­ap­point­ing cam­paign, there were a few wins worth recog­nis­ing even if we had to search to find them.

Play­ing four match­es in the space of 11 days placed the play­ers and staff un­der a lev­el of pres­sure rarely ex­pe­ri­enced in this re­gion. There was trav­el, re­cov­ery, train­ing venue and play­ing sur­face changes, tac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion and the men­tal chal­lenge of quick­ly mov­ing on from one re­sult to the next.

The win­dow ex­posed some weak­ness­es, but it al­so forced sev­er­al young play­ers to grow up quick­ly.

Wayne Fred­er­ick II is one of them. With every ap­pear­ance, he ap­pears more com­fort­able at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. He looks stronger, more ma­ture and in­creas­ing­ly will­ing to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. His red card against the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic was part of a dif­fi­cult night, but that mo­ment must al­so be­come part of his ed­u­ca­tion. The im­por­tant thing is how he re­sponds.

Ja­heim Joseph al­so gained valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in cir­cum­stances that were far from easy. Luke Phillip made his first se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al start and scored his first goal for the coun­try just days af­ter los­ing his fa­ther, Court­ney. That was a mo­ment which went well be­yond foot­ball and said plen­ty about his strength of char­ac­ter.

Mo­lik Khan was al­so hand­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show that he can be part of the group mov­ing for­ward. There was al­so goal­keep­er Den­zil Smith step­ping up big time, Noah Pow­der, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Ryan Telfer and an­oth­er late call-up in Michel Poon-Angeron show­ing grit and a maid­en op­por­tu­ni­ty for mid­field­er An­drew De Gannes while Kai­him Thomas came off a plane the night be­fore and put in a good shift in the 1-1 draw ver­sus Cu­ra­cao.

These play­ers were test­ed over 11 days in a way that might or­di­nar­i­ly have tak­en place across an en­tire year, or at least three sep­a­rate in­ter­na­tion­al win­dows.

That does not make rel­e­ga­tion ac­cept­able. It sim­ply means the ex­pe­ri­ence can­not be wast­ed.

T&T en­tered the win­dow with­out sev­er­al play­ers and lost oth­ers along the way. In all, more than a dozen mem­bers of the wider pool were miss­ing at var­i­ous stages be­cause of in­jury, sus­pen­sion or un­avail­abil­i­ty. Cap­tain Levi Gar­cia was forced off ear­ly in Willem­stad, Tyrese Spicer pulled up, while Daniel Phillips and Fred­er­ick re­ceived sus­pen­sions at a time when the squad was al­ready stretched.

Every team faces chal­lenges and those chal­lenges can­not be­come re­cur­ring ex­pla­na­tions for poor re­sults. But they are part of the re­al­i­ty and man­ag­ing them must be­come one of the lessons tak­en from this cam­paign. Squad depth, re­cov­ery be­tween match­es and the abil­i­ty to ad­just quick­ly will re­main im­por­tant ar­eas.

The next ex­am­i­na­tion ar­rives in No­vem­ber with a home-and-away Gold Cup qual­i­fi­er against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. T&T must find a way through that tie and ad­vance to the Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nar­ies in March. There is lit­tle time for dis­ap­point­ment to linger.

The se­nior men are not the on­ly na­tion­al team fac­ing an im­por­tant as­sign­ment. Lat­er this month, our Un­der-15 boys will trav­el to Azer­bai­jan for the FI­FA U-15 World Cup and Fes­ti­val. For those young play­ers, it will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball at a lev­el and in an en­vi­ron­ment com­plete­ly new to them.

The Sep­tem­ber-Oc­to­ber win­dow did not give us the re­sults we want­ed and ta­bles will show that clear­ly.

But the true val­ue of the ex­pe­ri­ence will be de­ter­mined by what hap­pens next. If the play­ers who were thrown in­to dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions re­turn stronger, if the staff learns from what went wrong and if the team is bet­ter pre­pared for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, then sure­ly some­thing use­ful would have come from a rough pe­ri­od.

The wins were few but they can­not be al­lowed to dis­ap­pear with the loss­es.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­elled to over 90 coun­tries dur­ing his jour­ney in sport. “Pro Look” is his week­ly col­umn on foot­ball, sport, cul­ture and the hu­man side of the game. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com