De­fend­er Kedie John­son and mid­field­er Maria-Frances Ser­rant were the on­ly two for­eign-based play­ers to join the coun­try’s se­nior women’s team for an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly clash against Ja­maica’s Reg­gae Girlz at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo set for Oc­to­ber 28.

For­mer na­tion­al play­er, Jinelle James, the di­rec­tor of women’s foot­ball at the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, said they’re try­ing their best, but it’s up to the sched­ules of the play­ers.

She said, “We start­ed train­ing four days a week. The for­eign-based play­ers who we were tar­get­ing, well, not every­body was able to come, but right now we have Kedie John­son and Maria-Frances Ser­rant, so they’re now in­te­grat­ed in­to the prepa­ra­tion. It’s all a build­ing process. The squad now comes to­geth­er; it’s now two weeks in, the girls are work­ing hard, and the coach is try­ing to mix and match to see the dif­fer­ent play­ers in the dif­fer­ent po­si­tions and what is pos­si­ble right now.”

John­son plays for French club LOSC Féminines, hav­ing joined in Ju­ly 2023. She plays a tidy de­fend­er on the left side of the de­fence but fan­cies go­ing up in at­tack. She has rep­re­sent­ed her coun­try since the age of 11 with the na­tion­al U-15 team, then the U-17 and U-20 teams. She made her de­but with the se­nior women’s team at the age of 17, play­ing in the 2018 CON­CA­CAF Women’s Cham­pi­onship, as well as the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games.

Ser­rant, on the oth­er hand, plays for BI­IK Shymkent, a Kaza­khstan team that dom­i­nates the QFL and par­tic­i­pates in the UE­FA Women’s Cham­pi­ons League.

“We con­tin­ue to be in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with po­ten­tial play­ers, de­pend­ing on every­body’s sched­ule and de­pend­ing on the sea­sons. We have a mix of col­lege play­ers and pro­fes­sion­al play­ers that we’re try­ing to get in. A cou­ple of them are grand­par­ent sit­u­a­tions, so there are a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties, and we’re try­ing our best in the time that we have to get peo­ple on board,” ex­plained James.

“So clos­er to that time, we will be bet­ter able to ad­vise on who the new per­sons are, the new faces in the team, the play­ers com­ing back in, and that sort of thing. Right now, every­body is look­ing at their sched­ule and their avail­abil­i­ty and every­thing,” James ex­plained.

The team, un­der for­mer T&T se­nior men’s na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve, has ramped up prepa­ra­tion for the World Cup Qual­i­fiers to take place next month. The team be­gan train­ing two weeks ago at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma, but has now added Tues­days and Thurs­days to their prac­tice day rou­tine.

James said, as it is now, the team trains Tues­days and Thurs­days at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um and Sat­ur­days and Sun­days at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Union, Mara­bel­la. The T&T team is in Group F of the Qual­i­fiers, which will al­so fea­ture El Sal­vador, Hon­duras, and Bar­ba­dos. The oth­er groups are Group A: Mex­i­co, Puer­to Ri­co, Saint Lu­cia, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands; Group B: Ja­maica, Guyana, Nicaragua, Do­mini­ca, and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da; Group C: Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guatemala, Bermu­da, Grena­da, and the Cay­man Is­lands; Group D: D: Haiti, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Suri­name, Be­lize, and An­guil­la; and Group E: Pana­ma, Cu­ba, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Cu­ra­cao, and Aru­ba.

Next year’s W Cham­pi­onship will serve as the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s qual­i­fi­er for both the 2027 FI­FA Women’s World Cup Brazil and the 2028 LA Sum­mer Olympics and is the first of three ma­jor cen­tralised tour­na­ments in the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s re­vamped women’s na­tion­al team cal­en­dar.

The 2025/26 Con­ca­caf W Qual­i­fiers will fea­ture 29 Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions — ex­clud­ing the re­gion’s two high­est-ranked na­tions — and will be played dur­ing the FI­FA Women’s In­ter­na­tion­al Match Win­dows in No­vem­ber 2025, Feb­ru­ary, and April 2026. At the con­clu­sion of the Con­ca­caf W Qual­i­fiers, the six group win­ners will join the Unit­ed States and Cana­da (the two high­est-ranked teams) in the eight-team Con­ca­caf W Cham­pi­onship. The match sched­ule for the 2025/26 Con­ca­caf W Qual­i­fiers will be an­nounced at a lat­er date.

Eve’s charges played a friend­ly match against the Na­pari­ma Col­lege Un­der-15 Boys team at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, yes­ter­day. The score-line end­ed 1-1. Na­tion­al strik­er Ken­nya ‘Ya Ya’ Cord­ner net­ted for the na­tion­al team, while Owen Sur­gan scored for Naps.

On­ly re­cent­ly, Eve re­leased the names of his squad for the qual­i­fiers, and it in­clud­ed vet­er­an strik­er Ken­nya ‘Ya Ya’ Cord­ner, hard-kick­ing mid­field­er Karyn Forbes, and de­fend­er Vic­to­ria Swift, among oth­er play­ers.