NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal pro­fes­sion­al club, Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, will con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tions for when the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee-led T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) kicks off its Elite Foot­ball League with a five tour to neigh­bour­ing Grena­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines from March 4-19.

This af­ter the Richard Fer­gu­son-owned club, was in­vit­ed by the Grena­da Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and the St Vin­cent and The Grenadines Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion to play five prac­tice match­es against Caribbean na­tions, St Lu­cia, Grena­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines who are all prepar­ing to re­sume their re­spec­tive CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League cam­paign at the end of March.

For the first stage of the tour in Grena­da, the Dave Quam­i­na-coached Rangers who cap­tured the sec­ond edi­tion of the As­cen­sion Tour­na­ment Foot­ball ten-club com­pe­ti­tion last Ju­ly/Au­gust will come up against St Lu­cia on March 7 be­fore fac­ing Grena­da on March 10, and again on March 12.

While Quam­i­na will be us­ing the match­es to ex­pose his new blood of play­ers to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball and pos­si­ble scouts, the match will al­so serve as wel­come en­coun­ters for both Grena­da and St Lu­cia na­tion­al teams.

This is as Grena­da lies at the bot­tom of its League A Group D three-team round-robin pool with one point from three match­es, four be­hind lead­ers El Sal­vador who have al­so played three match­es, while USA is in the sec­ond spot with two match­es to play.

In their fi­nal match, Grena­da will host the USA on March 24 need­ing a win to have any chance of avoid­ing de­mo­tion to League B.

The St Lu­cians, mean­while head their three-team League C Group C ta­ble with a max­i­mum of six points af­ter wins against Do­mini­ca, 1-0 away, and 2-0 at home over An­guil­la, and will com­plete their cam­paign against An­guil­la away on March 24, fol­lowed by a clash with Do­mini­ca at home in Cas­tries on March 27. The pair of An­guil­la, and Do­mini­ca have two points af­ter two match­es.

The sec­ond and fi­nal phase of the tour will see Rangers com­ing up against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in two en­coun­ters, first­ly, on Wednes­day, March 15, and then three days lat­er on March 18, both in St Vin­cent.

Like Grena­da and St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines re­sume CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League at the end of March as well and cur­rent­ly sits at the bot­tom of their four-team League B Group D round-robin se­ries with one point from four match­es af­ter earn­ing a 2-2 draw at home to group lead­ers Nicaragua (ten points).

In their oth­er match­es, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines suf­fered de­feats at home and away to sec­ond-placed T&T (nine points), 0-2 and 1-4, as well as a 1-0 loss on the road to the Ba­hamas, and in their re­main­ing match­es, they trav­el to Nicaragua on March 24 be­fore re­turn­ing home to host the Ba­hamas three days lat­er.

Look­ing ahead to the tour, Quam­i­na said, “These match­es are re­al­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to give the young play­ers like Re­al Gill, Daniel David, and Kai­him Thomas some more ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence as we plan for the fu­ture of the club.

“We cur­rent­ly have a good crop of young guys who are buzzing for the chance to play and we re­al­ly wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed to us by both the Grena­da Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (GFA), and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Quam­i­na added, “Apart from the few match­es the na­tion­al team has played the on­ly bit of com­pet­i­tive foot­ball we have seen lo­cal­ly has been the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment which we won, so these match­es will serve as great prepa­ra­tion for our guys as well as we look to­wards the re­sump­tion of foot­ball lo­cal­ly, when­ev­er that maybe.”

Quam­i­na al­so ex­pressed hope that the tour will pro­vide his tech­ni­cal staff with the chance to scout some Caribbean tal­ent as he says his club is open to adding the best tal­ent avail­able.

He said, “If we see play­ers that are of in­ter­est to us and are will­ing to come to Trinidad, we will have no prob­lem as we are of the be­lief that even though our foot­ball may be in some cri­sis, the Caribbean coun­tries still have re­spect for us as a foot­balling na­tion.”

For the tour, Quam­i­na who guid­ed Rangers to a sec­ond-place fin­ish in the 2019 As­cen­sion Tour­na­ment Foot­ball be­hind the T&T De­fence Force be­fore go­ing all the way to the ti­tle last year said he is ex­pect­ed to se­lect a 23-man squad with the team set to de­part on March 4 and re­turn to Trinidad on March 19. It will be the sec­ond such tour for Rangers, hav­ing made a tour of Grena­da and St Lu­cia, in 2019.

He added, “The match­es will be broad­cast­ed live on tele­vi­sion, the Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers web­site, and all our so­cial me­dia plat­forms. These match­es are in keep­ing with the club pol­i­cy of play­ing teams that are bet­ter than us and as such our play­ers can strive to im­prove their stan­dard of play.”