As the great Bun­ji Gar­lin re­peats in the song: we ready, we ready, we ready, we ready! I won’t burst in­to song, as I am com­plete­ly tone deaf, so I am just go­ing to say it once at the top of my voice, at a vol­ume that should hope­ful­ly shat­ter any lin­ger­ing doubts: Trinidad & To­ba­go, we are ready!

If you don’t know what I am re­fer­ring to, you must have been or­bit­ing Mars over the past month. To­day, Thurs­day, No­vem­ber 14th, 2025, from 8 pm at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, it’s the do-or-die game vs T&T’s Caribbean neigh­bours, Ja­maica. Be­ing “ready” is not mere­ly a mat­ter of turn­ing up, pur­chas­ing a Carib and a Chee Zees, and find­ing a seat in the cov­ered or un­cov­ered sec­tions. The team doesn’t need po­lite ap­plause; they need a hu­man mega­phone of vo­cal sup­port from the mo­ment they emerge for warm-ups un­til the fi­nal whis­tle screams. The T&T fans must let coach Steve Mc­Claren and his Ja­maican team know they haven’t land­ed on a tran­quil is­land re­treat; they’ve en­tered a bat­tle­ground. They need to feel the weight of this coun­try’s proud foot­balling his­to­ry push­ing against them for the full 90 min­utes. Mc­Claren may not know much about T&T now, but every one of us must en­sure he nev­er for­gets the night he played against Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. He and his team must leave here with night­mares.

We all know it is not go­ing to be easy, but noth­ing in life comes easy (un­less you win the lot­to). This group of play­ers have earned their stripes through sheer hard work and de­ter­mi­na­tion, and I ex­pect them to con­tin­ue to work hard and give their all for the Red, White and Black. It’s easy, in ret­ro­spect, to wave the flag of “un­lucky”, but let’s be bru­tal­ly truth­ful. Against Cu­raçao in the open­ing game, their goal­keep­er, Eloy Room, didn’t just earn his match fee; he should have re­ceived a medal. When he wasn’t spec­tac­u­lar­ly sav­ing shots, his de­fend­ers were clear­ing the ball off the line. It was the kind of open­ing game where the ball seemed to be al­ler­gic to the back of the net for T&T – it just wasn’t meant to be on the night.

Then came the trip to Ja­maica. Per­haps the psy­cho­log­i­cal dent of not se­cur­ing three points in the open­ing game, cou­pled with key sus­pen­sions (like skip­per Kevin Moli­no), pro­vid­ed the per­fect recipe for even less luck. Scor­ing 3 goals, all off­side, by one play­er must be one for the record books; nev­er in all my years of fol­low­ing foot­ball can I re­mem­ber an in­ci­dent like that. Af­ter giv­ing up two soft goals to the Ja­maicans, the team was on the back foot. It sim­ply meant the room for er­ror go­ing in­to the last 4 games of this fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fiers was ra­zor thin.

As ex­pect­ed, even though noth­ing should be tak­en for grant­ed, Bermu­da was dis­patched with a fine per­for­mance. Yes, the score­line could have been a more em­phat­ic 5-0 rather than 3-0, but the cru­cial thing was bag­ging those three points. The next game against the tricky Cu­raçaoans in their back­yard, on an ar­ti­fi­cial sur­face, could have eas­i­ly been a ba­nana skin, es­pe­cial­ly as they had just come off a spec­tac­u­lar vic­to­ry against the all-con­quer­ing Ja­maicans. How­ev­er, that Cu­raçao vic­to­ry was al­so a boost of con­fi­dence for T&T, as it meant the group was wide open rather than Ja­maica run­ning away with it.

Once again, the game against Cu­raçao away proved to be a game in which the T&T team should have won. The goal con­ced­ed was more of a de­fen­sive er­ror than any­thing else, and they need­ed to be more clin­i­cal than the sin­gle goal scored by Tyrese Spicer. The small el­e­ment of luck re­quired in sport seemed to once again be wear­ing a Cu­raçao jer­sey. While the old folks wise­ly ad­vise that you make your own luck—a truth eas­i­er to preach than to ex­e­cute—leav­ing Cu­raçao with one point was not ide­al. How­ev­er, it has still left T&T with a chance of au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion or an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter the In­ter-Con­fed­er­a­tion Play-offs.

I un­der­stand many of you may be say­ing that T&T qual­i­fy­ing for the 2026 World Cup is ‘pie in the sky’ or ‘beer talk’ right now. How­ev­er, un­til it is math­e­mat­i­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble for T&T to fin­ish in the top two spots, to main­tain an op­ti­mistic, al­most stub­born pos­i­tiv­i­ty must be the on­ly ap­proach. Yes, T&T’s fate is not en­tire­ly in the team’s hands for au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion—favourable re­sults are re­quired else­where—but crit­i­cal­ly, the team must do its part by win­ning these fi­nal two games.

The team is home, and the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um must be­come the im­pen­e­tra­ble fortress we con­stant­ly speak of. The fans, the 12th man, have the civic du­ty to help forge that im­pen­e­tra­ble at­mos­phere. It is not go­ing to be easy, and the Ja­maican team will not on­ly be play­ing for the 3 points to get them clos­er to au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion, but they will al­so be fight­ing with the spir­it of a na­tion rav­aged by the record-break­ing Cat­e­go­ry 5 Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa. While the dev­as­ta­tion is heart­break­ing, when the whis­tle blows, it is 11 vs 11, and it’s a pure fight for the badge.

Go­ing through the sea­soned Ja­maican team, more than half of their team ply their trade in Eng­land, most­ly in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion—a league that de­mands ef­fi­cien­cy and skill. I am not go­ing to sin­gle out any of their play­ers, as I am con­fi­dent coach Dwight Yorke would have run through the names with his squad and tac­ti­cal­ly would have done their home­work. The pos­i­tive is that Cu­raçao showed T&T that the Ja­maicans can be beat­en away from home—pro­vid­ed T&T brings an equal mea­sure of de­ter­mi­na­tion, fight, hunger, and, most im­por­tant­ly, na­tion­al pride.

I know af­ter the Gold Cup per­for­mance, a lot of out­siders felt this group was a two-way af­fair and that Bermu­da, along with T&T, was to be the ‘thanks for com­ing’ team. Cred­it to Coach Yorke, who con­sis­tent­ly preached that he was build­ing a squad to com­pete. Well, the com­pet­ing part is proven; now, it’s the re­sult that mat­ters.

Keep be­liev­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go! The time for pas­sive ob­ser­va­tion is over. Fans alone are not the recipe; the team needs 20,000 scream­ing sol­diers to de­scend up­on the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Let the roar from the stands be so deaf­en­ing that the very pitch vi­brates. Let Ja­maica know, with­out a shad­ow of a doubt, that this is not the of­fice, this is not the land of reg­gae—this is the land of so­ca, and Trinidad and To­ba­go is ready! Good luck to Coach Dwight Yorke, the staff, and the play­ers. The na­tion is be­hind you. Now, let’s make his­to­ry hap­pen!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.