T&T’s pro­lif­ic strik­er Ken­nya ‘Ya Ya’ Cord­ner was not se­lect­ed among Ken­wyne Jones’ 25-woman pre-tour­na­ment squad that left in the wee hours of this morn­ing for a Mex­i­can camp ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Women’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers which kicks-off from Ju­ly 4-18 in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co.

The lethal Fener­bahce goalscor­er, who de­cid­ed to pull her­self out of the squad, fol­low­ing a fall-out be­tween Jones and her close friend and then-team­mate Maylee At­tin-John­son in Jan­u­ary, was in­clud­ed in a 40-woman squad that was sub­mit­ted to the CON­CA­CAF ahead of the tour­na­ment last week.

How­ev­er, dur­ing a Press brief­ing on Tues­day Jones said that Cord­ner was not in­clud­ed as one of the 25 play­ers that will par­tic­i­pate in the camp be­fore the team is trimmed to 23 for the qual­i­fiers.

The team will leave in batch­es and will use the camp to ac­cli­ma­tise to the rugged Mex­i­can con­di­tions. “The lo­cal con­tin­gent and staff will be leav­ing here and the for­eign-based will be leav­ing and we will all meet up in Mex­i­co on Wednes­day God’s will­ing. We’re hav­ing a pre-tour­na­ment camp from the 22nd to the 30th of June. We’re go­ing out there to ac­cli­ma­tise and work on every­thing else tac­ti­cal­ly and get ac­cus­tomed to the sur­round­ings as we pre­pare for the tour­na­ment,” Jones said at a press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, mere hours be­fore the team left.”

Jones, a for­mer na­tion­al ju­nior and se­nior team cap­tain said, “The first game is the 5th of Ju­ly, so we’re go­ing out there and have a good eight days of camp and then we con­tin­ue train­ing af­ter that with the 23 that are meant to be in the team for the tour­na­ment. We have a cou­ple of games out there against a Mex­i­can club. We will play them twice and then we will have an in-house game our­selves to kind of mir­ror the week of the tour­na­ment with the spe­cif­ic time in be­tween match­es and how the tour­na­ment would go for us.”

He point­ed out some ob­jec­tives of the camp, “So it would give us a chance to mim­ic what will go on for that week in terms of hav­ing to train in be­tween, re­cov­er and play. It would give us a chance to see dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions, dif­fer­ent ideas and work tac­ti­cal­ly on things that we would like to put for­ward for the team dur­ing the tour­na­ment.”

Mex­i­co City, for ex­am­ple, is not on­ly 7,200 feet above sea lev­el (that’s about a mile and-a-half up in the sky), it’s sit­u­at­ed in a val­ley. Mon­ter­rey where the tour­na­ment will be host­ed is in Mex­i­co’s north­ern desert re­gion with an al­ti­tude of some 3,000 feet, it ex­pe­ri­ences very hot weath­er in the sum­mer.

The T&T team has been drawn in Group B along­side Cana­da, the 2020 Olympic champs, Pana­ma and Cos­ta Ri­ca. The oth­er group com­pris­es the USA, Mex­i­co, Ja­maica and Haiti. The top two teams from each group will qual­i­fy for the FI­FA World Cup in Aus­tralia and New Zealand from Ju­ly 20- Aug 20, 2023.

T&T will open its cam­paign against Cana­da at the Es­ta­dio BB­VA on Ju­ly 5 and will next face Cos­ta Ri­ca at the Es­ta­dio Uni­ver­si­tario on Ju­ly 8, be­fore com­plet­ing the group stage with a clash with Pana­ma at the Es­ta­dio BB­VA on Ju­ly 11.

Jones told the me­dia he did not get all the play­ers he would have want­ed but he is sat­is­fied that the play­ers he has and the fi­nal squad to be cho­sen for the qual­i­fiers will take the coun­try to the World Cup.

“Up to this point, I am very sat­is­fied. It had one par­tic­u­lar play­er that we had to make a de­ci­sion on that couldn’t join us for the sake of them­selves and our­selves as a team and as an as­so­ci­a­tion. It is not an is­sue I would like to raise be­cause there are still some pre­cau­tions to be met by the play­er. We had to omit her from the squad but every­one else I am very sat­is­fied with. We did a lot of work to get some new play­ers in, which can add some new di­men­sions to the squad right now. It is the best that we have right now, hope­ful­ly, that takes us to the goal at hand,” Jones ex­plained.

T&T SQUAD

Kimi­ka Forbes (Un­at­tached), Chel­si Jadoo (Val­adares Ga­ia FC (Por­tu­gal), Rhea Bel­grave (Po­lice FC (TnT), Shau­nalee Govia (Un­at­tached), Sha­di Ce­ci­ly Stoute (Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia (USA), Liana Hinds (Hi­bern­ian FC (Scot­land), Vic­to­ria Swift (Un­at­tach), Amaya El­lis (John Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Rae­nah Camp­bell (Un­at­tach), Asha James (West Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Chel­cy Ralph (Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Karyn Forbes (Po­lice FC (TnT).

Kedie John­son (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana Mon­roe. (U.S.A), Cay­la Mc Far­lane (Har­vard Un­vier­si­ty (USA), Maya Ma­touk (Po­lice FC (TnT), Maria-Frances Ser­rant (West Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Sarah De Gannes (West­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Lau­ryn Hutchin­son (Un­at­tach).

Ed­na Konte (Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut (U.S.A), Tene­sha Palmer (Po­lice FC (TnT), Klil Kesh­war (St. Fran­cis Col­lege (U.S.A), Tori Paul (George Ma­son Uni­ver­si­ty), Maki­da Her­bert (Cor­ban Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Jolie St. Louis (Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), Bri­an­na Austin (Flori­da At­lantic Uni­ver­si­ty (USA)

TECH­NI­CAL STAFF

Ken­wyne Jones (Head Coach), Car­los Ed­wards (As­sis­tant Coach), James Baird (Goal­keep­er Coach), Joanne Daniel (Team Man­ag­er), Anyl Gopeesingh (Team Doc­tor), Re­jan Chin (Re­hab Spe­cial­ist), Ter­ry John­son-Je­re­mi­ah (Equip­ment Man­ag­er).

At­i­ba Downes (Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Coach), An­dre Sook­lal (Me­dia Of­fi­cer and Video An­a­lyst), Alexan­dria Olton (Sport Psy­chol­o­gist), Dean Tuitt (Train­er), Kyl­la Charles (Mas­sage Ther­a­pist).