Na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick is set to re­ceive some much-need­ed help, at least in the goal­keep­ing de­part­ment, from the goal­keep­er coach for all the na­tion­al teams Kelvin Jack soon.

Jack was among a num­ber of coach­es who re­ceived con­tracts un­der the William Wal­lace-led T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion but has not worked a day on the job due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which has af­fect­ed sports ac­tion in var­i­ous ways world­wide.

How­ev­er, the re­sump­tion of play in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, cou­pled with per­mis­sion grant­ed for na­tion­al teams to re­sume prepa­ra­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in No­vem­ber, has left Fen­wick al­most se­mi-paral­ysed in the prepa­ra­tion of his goal­keep­ers ahead of the FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fiers which kicks off with an open­ing match against Guyana on March 25th in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee Robert Hadad re­vealed re­cent­ly that Jack, a mem­ber of the T&T team that played in the 2006 World Cup fi­nals in Ger­many, is set to re­turn home to help out, but he (Hadad) faces a con­tentious is­sue with the coach's salary for the time he has not been here.

"He is mak­ing his way back to Trinidad and To­ba­go, he is go­ing to meet up with the team in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, re­turn home with the team, do the quar­an­tine with them and then he will be back here there­after," Hadad ex­plained.

Jack has missed more than a year on the job with the team and has been talk­ing to Hadad to sort out a pay­ment plan for him dur­ing the time he has been at home in Eng­land. Ac­cord­ing to Hadad: "He and I have al­ready been talk­ing about the fact that he hasn't re­al­ly been here for 14 months of his con­tract, so should I pay him for the 14 months, or did you re­al­ly try to come home?"

He not­ed fur­ther: "So that will be up in the air, that's an­oth­er con­tentious is­sue just like every­thing else, there are a lot of con­tentious is­sues and some of these guys see things through one-way lens­es. Legal­ly, le­git­i­mate­ly we have to pay him, so I have to reach out to some part of him, the emo­tion­al and sym­pa­thet­ic side."

Jack, who has al­ways spo­ken out on the ills of T&T foot­ball, was right­ful­ly giv­en a po­si­tion as goal­keep­er coach on the se­nior na­tion­al team, along­side head coach Fen­wick, his as­sis­tant Derek King who is al­so Un­der-20 team coach, then man­ag­er Basil Thomp­son, equip­ment man­ag­er Michael Williams and train­er Os­win Birch­wood. Jack will dou­ble as goal­keep­er coach for the oth­er teams.

The team has been with­out a goal­keep­ing coach for the past months and it showed in a 0-7 drub­bing by the Unit­ed States in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter in Or­lan­do Flori­da, USA on Jan­u­ary 31.

The team warmed up for the Guyana match with a con­vinc­ing 4-1 vic­to­ry over T&T Pro League cam­paign­ers Po­lice FC on Fri­day at the hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. T&T win came cour­tesy of a dou­ble strike by Sean Bon­val and a goal apiece from Du­ane Muck­ette and Brent Sam.

On Mon­day, Fen­wick's men will con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tions with a clash with De­fence Force.

Jack could al­so be a wel­come as­set to the team in deal­ing with con­flict res­o­lu­tion, amidst ru­mours that some play­ers are op­posed to the coach­ing meth­ods of the coach (Fen­wick), among oth­er re­port­ed is­sues.

Thomp­son, the pre­vi­ous man­ag­er of the team is said to have been re­placed by Adri­an Ro­main.