Na­tion­al Un­der-20 coach Bri­an Haynes and his charges are go­ing through fi­nal prepa­ra­tions ahead of their Group D Con­ca­caf U-20 qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain from Feb­ru­ary 23-27.

The ju­nior "War­riors" will open their ac­count against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines at 6 pm on Feb­ru­ary 23 and then will face Do­mini­ca two days lat­er at the same time. They end the group stage against Con­ca­caf pow­er­house Cana­da on the fi­nal day of the tour­na­ment, need­ing to be among the top two teams to ad­vance.

Haynes on Wednes­day re­leased his 21-man squad which fea­tures sev­er­al over­seas-based pro­fes­sion­als such as Rio Car­dines, for­mer San Juan strik­er Lar­ry Noel who now plays for the Salt Lake Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, and mid­field­er Der­rel Gar­cia who now rep­re­sents the In­ter City In­ter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my in Spain.

Haynes promised fans that they would see a bunch of play­ers who are hard-work­ing and want to win for their coun­try.

"I am very hap­py with the group, it was a tough process in get­ting down to where we got to, but now I am ex­cit­ed be­cause these guys are here to work and they all seem ex­cit­ed to go and play so I am hap­py about that. The lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism is one thing, the lev­el of play is an­oth­er. The body of work that these guys bring to the group is awe­some.

"They are not just here ca­su­al, they are here work­ing hard and giv­ing their best, and what this has done is lift the lev­el of all the play­ers. The style of play will al­ways be pos­ses­sion-ori­ent­ed, but pos­ses­sion with­out a pur­pose is not pos­ses­sion for me, so yes pos­ses­sion to go for­ward, but when we get a chance to get be­hind we're go­ing to try and do that. And if we have to take shots from long dis­tances we're go­ing to try and do that."

Haynes al­so added: "I am ex­pect­ing my cre­ative play­ers to be that way and the one thing I want is to get shots out be­cause we have a good de­fen­sive group, and we want to make sure that the goal­keep­ers do their jobs."

Haynes said his fo­cus now is on the first match against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines be­cause noth­ing will mean any­thing un­til they play their first game and get the re­quired re­sult.

The young War­riors will have an off-day to­day be­fore tak­ing the field to­mor­row to face Queen's Park in a friend­ly match at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma.