De­spite the furore sur­round­ing the in­abil­i­ty of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to seal a World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match against Guyana here at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on March 25, Ken­wyne Jones, a for­mer na­tion­al strik­er and cap­tain, has said he sees no rea­son for coach Ter­ry Fen­wick to com­plain about this.

How­ev­er, Evans Wise, the tal­ent­ed left-foot­ed winger who was on the T&T team that played at the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, as well as for­mer Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal be­lieve, it's a ma­jor is­sue for T&T not to cap­i­talise on home ad­van­tage.

Both men feel that not enough was done by the ne­go­ti­at­ing par­ties- the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, be­ing led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe and of­fi­cials from the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and his Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram, for the match to be played in a foot­ball bub­ble, as is be­ing done around the world.

T&T will con­test Group F of the qual­i­fiers that al­so in­clude Puer­to Ri­co, Ba­hamas and St Kitts/Nevis.

Fol­low­ing the Guyana en­counter in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the War­riors will play their next two match­es away to Puer­to Ri­co on March 28 and then the Ba­hamas on April 5. They will com­plete the group phase with a match against St Kitts/Nevis on April 8 at home, need­ing to top the group to be able to ad­vance.

On Sat­ur­day, Min­is­ter Cud­joe made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the Min­istry of Health (MOH) coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence up­date, said: "The TTFA is say­ing that the play­ers can­not quar­an­tine and that she said is trou­bling for us here in T&T. 'The Play­ers must quar­an­tine' she stressed, es­pe­cial­ly the play­ers com­ing from the Unit­ed King­dom, Den­mark, Bel­gium, com­ing from coun­tries with the new (COVID-19) strain that we are re­al­ly con­cern about."

The Min­is­ter said: "The TTFA pro­pos­al was for the play­ers to come-in trav­el from the air­port to the Home of Foot­ball, play their game, stay for two days and then go back out. That does not pro­vide any­time re­al­ly for them to quar­an­tine. The pro­pos­al has al­so asked for them to room two-peo­ple to a room." 

In re­sponse, a press re­lease al­so on Sat­ur­day from the TTFA stat­ed: "Over the last few months, we have been in dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Health (MOH), Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T, and oth­er rel­e­vant Gov­ern­ment agen­cies. Based on these dis­cus­sions, nu­mer­ous pro­pos­als and sce­nar­ios were put for­ward to host the match in T&T but un­for­tu­nate­ly, none were ul­ti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful, which would sat­is­fy our FI­FA man­dates for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions."

The re­lease con­tin­ued: "The MOH’s pro­to­col and guide­lines man­date four­teen (14) days quar­an­tine for any­one en­ter­ing the coun­try. This con­di­tion is not fea­si­ble giv­en the FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dow and the MOH has de­clined the TTFA’s re­quest of an ex­emp­tion to fa­cil­i­tate a hot-bub­ble which would al­low mem­bers of both teams in­clud­ing staff, to ar­rive with­in a suit­able time pe­ri­od con­ducive to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball."

Ac­cord­ing to Corneal: "I would have prob­a­bly tried to con­tin­ue speak­ing to our gov­ern­ment and find ways to make it pos­si­ble to play here. Of course, we have to look at the safe­ty first of our peo­ple, and es­pe­cial­ly what we have done over the past eight months, con­tain­ing the virus. I know there is a lot more that needs to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion but los­ing the home ad­van­tage is a ma­jor is­sue when it comes to foot­ball or any sport."

Mean­while, Wise called on the par­ties in­volved to come to­geth­er for yet an­oth­er time to al­low the T&T foot­ballers the op­por­tu­ni­ty at achiev­ing home ad­van­tage, not­ing: "I def­i­nite­ly be­lieve we're mak­ing a mis­take. Home ad­van­tage is a plus, es­pe­cial­ly for an in­ex­pe­ri­ence team and a team that hasn't played to­geth­er for pret­ty much the whole year. I un­der­stand that guys have COVID-19 is­sues and quar­an­tine pro­to­cols, but oth­er coun­tries did it. The US did it for us in the game we played re­cent­ly, so I think it's un­for­tu­nate that we can't get that home ad­van­tage for play­ers to boost their con­fi­dence, and al­so for the fans to get to see their team play."

He told Guardian Me­dia Sports it will be im­por­tant for coach Ter­ry Fen­wick to in­clude some of the se­nior over­seas play­ers such as Kevin Moli­no, Khaleem Hy­land, Jo­evin Jones etc, who will all be able to ral­ly the younger play­ers and be a dri­ving force mov­ing for­ward.

Fen­wick's 7-o drub­bing at the hands of the US, may not have on­ly bro­ken down play­ers con­fi­dence, but it al­lowed the Eng­lish-born coach to see what he had avail­able to him.

Jones, on the oth­er hand, fol­low­ing his pub­lic crit­i­cism of the na­tion­al coach af­ter the US de­feat, said: "It's a neu­tral venue. The same woes T&T will be hav­ing, Guyana will prob­a­bly have the same woes, so it's just about us go­ing out on the pitch and play­ing the match to get the re­quired re­sult."

He added: "I don't see where the ar­gu­ment is re­al­ly. Know­ing what the sit­u­a­tion is at hand, Mr Fen­wick can't re­al­ly com­plain. He had a game based on the con­di­tions, based on how things have been rolled out here, so it's about him (Fen­wick), af­ter the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od, com­ing back from the States, he should be fo­cused on get­ting the team to­geth­er, what­ev­er plan he has down and try­ing to get every­one fo­cused for that match in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic."