For­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack is urg­ing fans to make the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain their "fortress" in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the coun­try's qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the FI­FA World Cup to be staged joint­ly in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

Jack, who lives in Eng­land, ap­peared on the Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme on Thurs­day morn­ing and said he be­lieves the T&T "So­ca War­riors" un­der coach Dwight Yorke can qual­i­fy for the World Cup but ex­plained that it would re­quire them to win their home match­es while pick­ing up valu­able points on the road.

So far, the team has ac­com­plished its mis­sion of get­ting to the fi­nal round of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process, Jack said, but hints at tougher roads ahead, de­spite the tour­na­ment be­ing held by three Con­ca­caf na­tions.

"As it is, it's re­al­ly all about get­ting three points, and I'll be as­ton­ished if Dwight isn't think­ing along the same lines that I'm think­ing. It's all about get­ting three points, how­ev­er you play. Your style of play, I mean he's go­ing to have a phi­los­o­phy of how he wants the team to play but at the end of the day, it's how are we go­ing to grind out three points, how are we go­ing on the road or go away from home and get three points, and that's the chal­lenge for the boys," Jack said.

"I don't care if we play well, as long as we get to the World Cup, that's the most im­por­tant thing for me. I think we can qual­i­fy. It's a great op­por­tu­ni­ty, as we all know, the US, Cana­da and Mex­i­co are host­ing the tour­na­ment, so our main ri­vals now would be Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma, Ja­maica, which has quite a strong squad, and Hon­duras. I was look­ing at some of the squads, and I think Suri­name has an in­ter­est­ing squad.

"Lis­ten, it's not go­ing to be easy, it's not go­ing to be easy, so we need to make the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um our fortress, and when we go away from home, we have to pick up points. I was talk­ing to Mar­vin An­drews the oth­er day and we were talk­ing about when we went to Pana­ma and we won 1-0 on a poor pitch, and we were hor­ri­ble, I mean hor­ri­ble, we did not play well, but we got one good chance and Stern John scored, and that's all we need­ed. It kick-start­ed us, we got three points away from home, and it's the same thing with these guys, they need to get some points away from home as well," Jack added.

The lanky cus­to­di­an, a goal­keep­ing coach at Dover Ath­let­ic, earned 33 caps for T&T be­tween 1997 and 2006, play­ing for his coun­try in the 2006 FI­FA World Cup, shared that T&T's qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cup hinges heav­i­ly on the fit­ness of Spar­tak Moscow mid­field/strik­er Levi Gar­cia and Kevin Moli­no who plays for De­fence Force Elites in the do­mes­tic league.

Jack, who came up through the ranks as a goal­keep­er from youth na­tion­al cus­to­di­an to the se­nior lev­el, al­so be­lieves that the cur­rent staff com­pris­ing Yorke, for­mer na­tion­al mid­field mae­stro Rus­sell Lat­apy and de­fend­er Derek should be re­tained should the team not qual­i­fy for the World Cup.

"The chop­ping and chang­ing all the time, at some point, they're go­ing to have to make a de­ci­sion and de­cide, we would like to keep these guys to help our foot­ball de­vel­op, so I see no rea­son to change, they're in ca­pa­ble hands. Dwight is a good leader.

"If you look at him now, he is as fit as a fid­dle, and he has ed­u­cat­ed him­self on the game and so on, so he has im­pressed me a lot. And not on­ly him, Rus­sell as well, who is a re­al­ly good foot­ball mind, and then you have Derek King, who has a re­al­ly good knowl­edge of the lo­cal game."