Na­tion­al women's rug­by coach Richard Sta­glon is fac­ing a tough con­test on Sat­ur­day when his team faces Mex­i­co in the Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North (RAN) Re­gion­al Tour­na­ment from 4 pm at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

"I am not go­ing to lie, it's go­ing to be tough for the girls," Sta­glon told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day.

The lo­cal women were ham­mered by Ja­maica 70-5 five weeks ago in their first match of a three-na­tion group, and two of their key play­ers- Ken­isha Vin­cent, a util­i­ty play­er, and An­gel Jorsling have picked up in­juries dur­ing train­ing, there­by fur­ther weak­en­ing the T&T women ahead of the clash.

Sta­glon has since called up Bel­la Mar­tin and Al­lis­sa Fields, whom he said will try to fill the shoes of Vin­cent and Jorsling, but will have a dif­fi­cult task in do­ing so.

"Those are play­ers who can­not be re­placed, so we're work­ing on mak­ing ad­just­ments," the coach said.

The T&T women have been play­ing friend­ly match­es against the coun­try's Un­der-19 men's team. They are to have their last train­ing ses­sion to­day, which Sta­glon said would be a light one. The Mex­i­cans, known for their small size but swift­ness on the field, have strength­ened their team from an ex­change pro­gramme with Cana­da and the Unit­ed States that al­lows play­ers to play in the North Amer­i­can na­tions reg­u­lar­ly.

Sta­glon said that due to this pro­gramme, the Mex­i­can team now boasts more than five pro­fes­sion­al play­ers, while his team is an all-T&T team with no play­ers play­ing out­side of T&T.

The onus of a re­sult now rests on the shoul­ders of play­ers such as Nico­lette Pan­tor, Leah Kin­ti­ba, Fay­ola Jack, Zoe Mc Knight and Aqy­il­la O'Brien, Sta­glon said, not­ing that be­cause of the small size of the Mex­i­cans, he will utilise the team's big­ger play­ers to car­ry the ball for­ward.

"By us­ing this ap­proach, we will at­tempt to move the small Mex­i­cans out of the way, while al­so cre­at­ing space for his play­ers to ex­plore the room in the wide ar­eas. The aim will be to force them to de­fend. I think if we show up on the day and make our tack­les and so on, we should be fine, but it will be a tough match," Sta­glon said.

The top team in the group will progress to an­oth­er lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion in RAN, while the oth­er teams will re­main and try to build their qual­i­ty. Hav­ing lost heav­i­ly to the Ja­maicans, the T&T women will have to beat the Mex­i­cans by a large mar­gin.