There comes a point in every cam­paign when a team’s be­lief is test­ed to its core. For T&T, that mo­ment came in Kingston, Ja­maica on Tues­day night. A 2-0 de­feat to Ja­maica leaves us star­ing at a path where noth­ing less than vic­to­ry in our next two match­es will do.

It was not for lack of ef­fort. We fought, we cre­at­ed chances, and we had mo­ments that could have swung the game our way. But foot­ball is of­ten cru­el. A goal flagged off­side that might have giv­en us a life­line. Calls that didn’t fall in our favour. Two sus­pen­sions that force us to re­group again. And if we rewind just a few days to Cu­raçao in Port-of-Spain, there were the missed op­por­tu­ni­ties that should have put three points on the board.

The re­sult is de­flat­ing. You wake up the next day and think all is lost. Even get­ting out of bed feels like pain. Re­spond­ing to mes­sages, fac­ing the noise, takes more than most peo­ple re­alise. But this is where ex­pe­ri­ence comes in­to play. Those of us who have been through the cy­cles, the highs and the crush­ing lows, have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help steady the ship, to keep the less ex­pe­ri­enced ones in tune and be­liev­ing when doubt is loud­est.

Ask Kevin Moli­no and Daniel Phillips what it felt like to be told their yel­low cards would rule them out. The dis­ap­point­ment on their faces told the sto­ry. Yet Dwight Yorke still brought them to Kingston, keep­ing them in the camp, keep­ing their spir­it alive, re­mind­ing the group that every­one is still part of this fight. Even small dis­rup­tions like the team’s trans­port ve­hi­cle be­ing clamped by se­cu­ri­ty at the air­port, and the team bus ar­riv­ing 40 min­utes lat­er be­cause the dri­ver claimed he took a wrong turn, felt geared to throw us off. These are the un­seen mo­ments that test fo­cus and re­silience.

This is what true tests look like. When ques­tions about abil­i­ty sur­face and when neg­a­tiv­i­ty cir­cles. These are the mo­ments that ei­ther de­fine or de­rail a cam­paign.

And we can­not for­get our peo­ple who filled the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um two Fri­days ago. They gave us their voic­es, their faith, their en­er­gy. We owe them some­thing in re­turn. To the naysay­ers who ex­pect us to fal­ter, we owe a re­sponse as well. Our play­ers need to be re­mind­ed: every time we step on­to the pitch, we car­ry not on­ly our own am­bi­tions but the pride and hopes of a na­tion.

We al­so ac­knowl­edge the gov­ern­ment’s sup­port in the pass­ing of the “grand­par­ent law”, a step not tak­en be­cause lo­cal tal­ent is in­suf­fi­cient, but tak­en to strength­en our play­er pool. This mir­rors what many op­po­nents have done: Ja­maica, Bermu­da, Cu­raçao all have leaned on her­itage play­ers to re­main com­pet­i­tive. If we want to match them, we must be prag­mat­ic and seize every tool avail­able.

To the three young boys and their mom who showed up at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um at 9 am on the Sun­day af­ter our draw with Cu­raçao, just to be near their War­riors, we re­mem­ber you. We car­ry you with us.

To those who sit be­hind screens wait­ing to pounce on our so­cial chan­nels: con­struc­tive crit­i­cism is wel­come. It helps us grow. But it is not an en­ti­tle­ment to be abu­sive and nasty. We will not tol­er­ate tar­get­ed abuse or vil­i­fi­ca­tion and yes, we will re­move it. Sup­port­ers and crit­ics alike must re­mem­ber that re­al peo­ple wear the shirt.

For us, there is no lux­u­ry of self-pity. Every­thing is still to play for. Bermu­da and Cu­raçao are next, and the equa­tion is bru­tal­ly sim­ple: we must win.

That means be­lief must run deep­er than frus­tra­tion. It means block­ing out the noise and fo­cus­ing on­ly on what we can con­trol. It means tak­ing the lessons from Kingston, the missed calls, the missed chances, the mo­ments of lapse and turn­ing them in­to fu­el.

The beau­ty and the bur­den of foot­ball is that it al­ways gives you an­oth­er chance, but rarely on your terms. We don’t have room for ex­cus­es. We don’t have time for neg­a­tiv­i­ty. What we do have is the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bounce back, to prove our­selves, to re­mind every­one what it means to wear red, white, and black.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­elled to 90 coun­tries dur­ing his jour­ney in sport. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com