The T&T Un­der-19 Rug­by men will wing out at 7:30 this morn­ing for the Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North (RAN) U-19 Tour­na­ment in Kingston, Ja­maica, Ju­ly 14-17.

The team will be led by cap­tains- de­fend­er Rhys Valere and for­ward Liam Cabralis. Coach Jerome Poon-Tip said he be­lieves that with the qual­i­ty that ex­ists in the team, they can be among the top four teams in the tour­na­ment.

Poon-Tip se­lect­ed his fi­nal squad on Sat­ur­day, two weeks af­ter his charges took part in their first out­ings at a Caribs-or­gan­ised com­pe­ti­tion at the San Juan North Sec­ondary School where they were beat­en by both Caribs and Trinidad North­erns.

Poon-Tip said he was sat­is­fied with the dis­play by the young play­ers who were up against many sea­soned play­ers in the tour­na­ment. The T&T un­der 19s will face tough com­pe­ti­tion in a group that con­sists of Mex­i­co, the USA South Pan­thers, Bermu­da, Cay­man Is­lands and Ja­maica.

There will be match days on the 14th and 15th where the teams will play two 40-minute games. And af­ter a rest day on Sat­ur­day, the fi­nals on Sun­day will see the six teams play one match of two 35-minute halves.

“As we em­bark on our first com­pet­i­tive tour­na­ment since 2019, it has been quite the jour­ney for the boys, af­ter two years of no for­mal train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion lo­cal­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, due to COVID and all the re­stric­tions.

They have put in a lot of hard work since Jan­u­ary and have had the sup­port of the T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union (TTR­FU) and strength and con­di­tion­ing at the Elite ath­lete well­be­ing unit or EAWU un­der the SporTT in get­ting pre­pared. We al­so want to ac­knowl­edge and thank SporTT and the Min­istry of Sports for be­ing ma­jor spon­sors of the team to be able to com­pete at the tour­na­ment in Ja­maica this year,” Poon-Tip said.

Mean­while, the women’s team left Pi­ar­co yes­ter­day for Ja­maica where they will com­pete at the Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North Women’s 12s Tour­na­ment from Fri­day 15th to Sun­day. The team will be cap­tain Leah Kin­ti­ba. Alexan­dria Olton is coach.

Pres­i­dent of the TTRU Maria Thomas said, “That the rep­re­sen­ta­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go has in this tour­na­ment is a re­sult of ex­ten­sive ef­forts of the TTRU to fo­cus on train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth in all ar­eas of the game.”

T&T TEAMS

MEN

For­wards

Ephram Pathron, Iain Mc Laugh­lin, Ronal­do Spencer, Alessan­dro Ran­doo, Nathan Mars, Justin Khan, Liam Cabralis, Jaib­er­to Ser­ra­no, Aiken An­der­son, Jose Cave, Joshua Mar­son, Dami­an Wilkin­son, Aaron Stan­ley, Ronal­do Besson

Backs

Ben­jamin Des Vi­gnes, Je­re­my Bonas, Rhys Valere, Nathan Achim, Ja­bali Alex­is, Ja­heim Wal­ton, Eli­jah Williams, Joshua Grant, Dar­rius Al­leyne, Xavier Williams.

WOMEN

Thandia Jack, Keifa Des Vi­gnes, Aqiy­la O’Brien, Jade Hus­bands, Ap­phia Glas­gow, Leah Kin­ti­ba (Cap­tain), On­i­ca George, Nico­lette Pan­tor, Cal­isha Har­ry, On­i­ca George, Kadiera George, Mari­ka Mendez, Ke­tara Munroe, Kath­leen Stephen, Deni­qua Gor­don, Car­li­na Phillip, An­gel Jorsling. Alexan­dria Olton (Coach).

STAFF

Richard Sta­glon and Kan­isha Vin­cent (Ref­er­ees), Afeya Jef­fery (Phys­io­ther­a­pist), Keron Hinds ( Team sup­port), Shari John (Me­dia), Kel­son Fi­garo and Maria Thomas (Com­men­tary), World Rug­by Train­er - Dalia Jor­dan Brown (Medic).