A con­cern that has af­fect­ed T&T foot­ball for many years, threat­ened to rear its ug­ly head on Fri­day night in the World Cup qual­i­fi­er against St Kitts & Nevis at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, be­fore an al­most packed crowd of some 20,000 spec­ta­tors.

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke said the is­sue of be­ing a re­ac­tive team rather than a proac­tive one was ev­i­dent Fri­day, de­spite get­ting a start that the So­ca War­riors should have used to pro­pel them for­ward. With four points from two match­es, which left the T&T team in the sec­ond po­si­tion in Group B, the War­riors need­ed to win for a sol­id chance to progress as one of two teams, and they did.

Spar­tak Moscow in­stru­men­tal mid­field­er Levi Gar­cia latched on to a right-side cen­tre and fired home for a 1-0 T&T ad­van­tage in the ninth minute. How­ev­er, Gar­cia lat­er turned vil­lain when goal­keep­er Ju­lani Archibald kept him out from the penal­ty spot on a chance that T&T should have added to their ad­van­tage.

Yorke told the me­dia at the post-match press con­fer­ence that even when the T&T team got an ear­ly start in the past, they would go in­to re­serve mode.

"It's some­thing we've al­ways talked about, and I think it's been a curse for T&T for sev­er­al years. I al­ways say we are a re­ac­tive team and not a proac­tive one. We al­ways en­cour­age the op­po­si­tion, we al­ways give them a start and then chase them down, even if we get off to a re­al­ly good pos­i­tive start, we need to kick hard and go to an­oth­er lev­el, but some­how we tend to go back in­to re­serve and give them some en­cour­age­ment.

"But the defin­ing mo­ment, cer­tain­ly in the first half, was the penal­ty. Had we con­vert­ed that to make it 2-0, then it might have been a dif­fer­ent di­men­sion, but cer­tain­ly we need to be a bit more ruth­less, we need a bit more care with our pass­es, and the tran­si­tion from back to front. At times, we got so deep that the con­nec­tion was not to­geth­er in the first half, as there were lots of gaps de­vel­op­ing, so we need to be a bit more com­pact. But we are a team that is grow­ing, and the lads have re­act­ed well in the sec­ond half,"

Yorke ex­plained af­ter seal­ing an im­pres­sive 6-2 vic­to­ry over their St Kitts & Nevis coun­ter­parts that took them to sev­en points.

The So­ca War­riors will next face Cos­ta Ri­ca on Tues­day (June 10) for one of two top spots that will take them in­to the fi­nal round of the qual­i­fiers lat­er this year. The for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er, now turned coach, told the me­dia that he had to make a cou­ple of changes, which worked for him in the end.

"We were not at the races, cer­tain­ly in the first half. We al­lowed them to get back in­to the game. When we went 1-0 up, we thought we should have kicked on but I think apart of the game, es­pe­cial­ly the penal­ty, would have tak­en us to 2-0 and that could have led to a change, but the mo­ment we didn't con­vert that penal­ty, they seemed to get a sec­ond wind and they re­al­ly came at us but we re­act­ed very well, which I was pleased with to go 2-1 up.

"But again, we went back in­to the same mood, which was to drop deep and in­vite a lit­tle bit of pres­sure. Their right wing was caus­ing us some prob­lems in the first half, so from a tac­ti­cal point of view we felt that An­dre Ram­per­sad was not giv­ing the sort of in­for­ma­tion and play­ing the way we want­ed him to play, so we made the ad­just­ments and we looked a more com­pe­tent team in terms of mov­ing the game for­ward and tak­ing the game away from St Kitts & Nevis."

New-found Sealy im­press­es Yorke

The So­ca War­riors win came cour­tesy of a brace from new-found US-based Dante Sealy, the son of for­mer T&T strik­er Scott Sealy, who got on the score­sheet in the 29th and 66th min­utes to add to items from Gar­cia in the ninth, cap­tain Kevin Moli­no in the 48th, Ajani For­tune in the 85th and Nathaniel "Nat­ty" James in the 89th minute.

Yorke spoke high­ly of the 22-year-old CF Mon­tre­al winger, say­ing he was a tremen­dous as­set to his team.

"I am very pleased with Dante Sealy, it took some work to get him over the line, in terms of get­ting him to rep­re­sent T&T, so I was pleased with that. A cou­ple of days he has been with us be­cause he hasn't been with us very long, but we've seen some good pos­i­tive sides of him, so threw him in­to the deep end, de­but­ing in front of 20,000-odd-thou­sand peo­ple is not nor­mal for a young­ster, but I think he's done ex­treme­ly well, he has tapped off his per­for­mance with two goals, and I think there's a lot more to come from him once he is em­bed­ded in the team, and buys in­to our ideas and phi­los­o­phy."

Ac­cord­ing to Yorke: "I think he will con­tin­ue to grow, but the signs are very en­cour­ag­ing. I think the fans who don't know who Dante Sealy is will have an in­sight in­to what he can bring now. He has cer­tain­ly im­proved our team, and I look for­ward to work­ing with him and try­ing to im­prove him go­ing for­ward, but he is a spe­cial tal­ent that we em­brace hav­ing in our set-up.

"I'm sure the Amer­i­cans will watch and ask how we are al­lowed to get him, but we're de­light­ed at the same time," Yorke con­clud­ed.

Sealy told the me­dia af­ter­wards that he was ea­ger to get the game go­ing to show what he has to of­fer.

"I feel blessed and ho­n­oured to rep­re­sent the coun­try, and this is my first step.

"I was just play­ing my game, stay­ing wide. I am a play­er who likes to take one-ver­sus-ones and be ag­gres­sive in that way. I felt that when I drove, I al­ways cre­at­ed space for my­self to get shots."