T&T's se­nior men’s foot­ball team will step up prepa­ra­tions for next year's CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup with an in­ter­est­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Wales at the Race­course Ground in Wales, home venue of Wrex­ham AFC, on March 20.

The fix­ture has been con­firmed for the venue which will mark a spe­cial re­turn for T&T coach Den­nis Lawrence, who played there for Wrex­ham be­tween 2001-2006.

T&T met the 19th FI­FA-ranked Wales once be­fore in the build-up to the 2006 World Cup and lost 2-1 at Graz, Aus­tria in May of that year. Lawrence played in that en­counter in which cur­rent as­sis­tant coach Stern John net­ted for the Leo Been­hakker-coached team to open the scor­ing on 32 min­utes. Gareth Bale al­so marked his de­but as Wales’ youngest in­ter­na­tion­al by set­ting up their late win­ner.

Lawrence said, “We are de­light­ed to have this op­por­tu­ni­ty to face Wales in the next in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow in March. The match comes at an ide­al time for us which is just over a cou­ple months be­fore the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and will ob­vi­ous­ly be a very good test for our team.

"Wales have shown them­selves to be a for­mi­da­ble op­po­nent with good qual­i­ty play­ers un­der the man­age­ment of Ryan Gig­gs and I ex­pect the re­turn of the Wales na­tion­al team to Race­course Ground to be spe­cial and both teams will be aim­ing to put on a com­pet­i­tive con­test.”

This will be the first match of 2019 for Gig­gs’ side, in prepa­ra­tion for its first EU­RO 2020 qual­i­fy­ing match against Slo­va­kia four days lat­er in Cardiff.

Gig­gs said he is look­ing for­ward to re­turn­ing to the Race­course: “I’m de­light­ed that we’re able to play at the Race­course for the first time in 10 years. We thor­ough­ly en­joyed tak­ing the team there for an open train­ing ses­sion in May. The sup­port was in­cred­i­ble and fur­ther fu­elled our am­bi­tion to host a match at the his­toric ground. T&T will prove an in­ter­est­ing test for us and will be great prepa­ra­tion ahead of the EU­RO 2020 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign.”

The game fol­lows in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es against Iran, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Uruguay, Pana­ma, Thai­land, Chi­na, Pe­ru, Ecuador, Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe and Nicaragua among oth­ers with­in the past three years.