Mount Pleas­ant Foot­ball Acad­e­my’s new­ly signed Kaïlé Au­vray will be look­ing to bring the ex­pe­ri­ence of play­ing in dif­fer­ent foot­ball en­vi­ron­ments to the team when the new Ja­maica Pre­mier League sea­son kicks off next month ac­cord­ing to the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er.

Mount Pleas­ant signed the winger ear­li­er this week, look­ing to add to their fire­pow­er for the up­com­ing sea­son, as well as the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup when they take part lat­er next year.

Au­vray, al­though on­ly 19 years old, has played in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca in his club ca­reer and al­ready has se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing played for T&T in two friend­ly match­es against Ja­maica in March.

These, he says, were where Mount Pleas­ant scout­ed him be­fore mak­ing an of­fer for him. At this time, he was fin­ish­ing up his con­tract at Sport­ing Kansas City II in Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) Next Pro in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA).

“When I played with Trinidad in the two friend­lies in Ja­maica, it was my first time play­ing in front of the Ja­maican pub­lic,” Au­vray told the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er. “It opened a few eyes and fur­ther cre­at­ed this link.”

Au­vray, born in Caen, France, al­so played for Lille II in that coun­try, and Min­neso­ta Unit­ed 2 in MLS Next Pro. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, he has al­so rep­re­sent­ed the USA at the Un­der-17 lev­el hav­ing lived in that coun­try since he was six years old. He al­so rep­re­sent­ed St Mar­tin, where his Guade­lou­pi­an fa­ther, Stéphane, is the head coach. His Trinida­di­an moth­er, was sup­port­ive, like his fa­ther, of his move to Mount Pleas­ant.

“It was very pos­i­tive be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly, my fam­i­ly is hap­py to have me clos­er,” he said. “If you want to look at track and field, and even now so with foot­ball, Ja­maica takes a lot of val­ue in its ath­letes, so I know that work­ing hard, every­thing will be put in place. They take their ath­letes very se­ri­ous­ly in this coun­try.”

But be­ing in Ja­maica by him­self does not faze Au­vray as he says he is used to trav­el­ling alone for foot­ball.

“Hon­est­ly, it’s some­thing I’ve done my whole life,” he said. “When I was 13, I moved to Guade­loupe by my­self for foot­ball in or­der to be in a French ter­ri­to­ry to have more chances to get to Eu­rope. From that young age, I’ve had to go to dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments. When I was in France, I was al­so by my­self so this is def­i­nite­ly noth­ing new. What’s even bet­ter, be­ing in Ja­maica it’s clos­er to home and hon­est­ly feels like home due to the prox­im­i­ty.”

Au­vray was en­ticed by Mount Pleas­ant not on­ly be­cause they are JPL cham­pi­ons, but he was al­so look­ing for­ward to work­ing with for­mer na­tion­al play­er and Head Coach Theodore Whit­more.

“He’s very known through­out the Caribbean,” Au­vray said. “I’m aware he’s a for­mer play­er for the na­tion­al team, ob­vi­ous­ly, he was the na­tion­al team coach, al­so. I’ve been work­ing with him now for the past cou­ple of days since I reached.

“I’m aware that Mount Pleas­ant are Pre­mier League cham­pi­ons. That’s some­thing im­por­tant, know­ing that you’re com­ing in­to a strong team. They al­so showed con­fi­dence in me through the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and since I’ve been here, I re­al­ly feel that there’s a project that I want to be a part of.”

Au­vray is pleased with the fa­cil­i­ties at Mount Pleas­ant.

“I find that the fa­cil­i­ties are pret­ty good,” he said. “You have fields, you have a prop­er gym. Every­thing is pro­vid­ed, the food. I find that the in­fra­struc­ture is very good, es­pe­cial­ly for the Caribbean, al­so.

“So far, I’ve been set­tling very well. My team­mates have been very wel­com­ing. I’m get­ting along well with every­body, so praise God for that.

“I re­mem­ber Sue-Lae [Mc­Calla], who was the right back [in the game against Ja­maica], and al­so De­mario Phillips. I was hap­py to see a cou­ple of fa­mil­iar faces and be able to chat a bit about the games and ex­change a bit about our dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences and it was good.

“Now we’re go­ing to be team­mates so there’s no longer a ri­val­ry.”

Au­vray says al­though he is look­ing for­ward to scor­ing and as­sist­ing nu­mer­ous goals this sea­son, the big­ger pic­ture for him is the team do­ing well.

“The tar­get is to be as ef­fi­cient as I can be, and to get on the score­sheet,” he said. “As­sist­ing is im­por­tant to help a team, as a for­ward your goal is to score and get the as­sist but first and fore­most, it’s for the team to be suc­cess­ful, then in­di­vid­u­al­ly to be suc­cess­ful through the team, not the oth­er way around.”