T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team coach Dwight Yorke says he holds no fears for Ja­maica ahead of their Group B Con­ca­caf Fi­nal Round World Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Kingston, Ja­maica, on Tues­day. Kick off is 8 pm.

The Ja­maicans will go in­to the match as Group B lead­ers af­ter a 4-0 win away to Bermu­da dur­ing Fri­day night’s pro­gramme, which al­so T&T held to a goal­less draw by Cu­ra­cao at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

Look­ing ahead to the match against Ja­maica and what can be ex­pect­ed of his team, a con­fi­dent Yorke said, ‘We know the group that we got drawn in­to, and we need to be at our best. We weren’t at our best in the first half (against Cu­ra­cao), and I think it was well ac­knowl­edged, but in the sec­ond half, we played in the man­ner that we can play and cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ties that we have cre­at­ed, then I don’t see any rea­son why we couldn’t win.’

“But, we have to take the pos­i­tive, which is we didn’t con­cede, which we haven’t done for a while, and since I have tak­en the reins, we have al­ways seemed to con­cede, so that’s a plus go­ing in­to the next game.”

“I’m sure there are one or two peo­ple who are go­ing to be neg­a­tive about the re­sults; that’s part and par­cel of the game, but cer­tain­ly there is plen­ty of foot­ball left and some­thing to build on, and I think not con­ced­ing and play­ing the way that we did in the sec­ond half gives us a lot of en­er­gy and con­fi­dence go­ing in­to the game with Ja­maica.”

“We have ob­vi­ous­ly the most dif­fi­cult chal­lenge of go­ing in­to Ja­maica, but we feel that we are in a good place, and it’s a long road ahead. We were nev­er go­ing to try and tell the pub­lic some­thing else, but we know the chal­lenge of qual­i­fy­ing was al­ways go­ing to be a bit chal­leng­ing for us, and this is the first step to­wards it.”

We know Ja­maica is ob­vi­ous­ly the num­ber one seed­ed team in the group, and we in T&T don’t have that lux­u­ry of go­ing and play­ing any team.

“So, the mind­set is pos­i­tive. As I said, it’s a game. In the past, we prob­a­bly could have lost, but I’ve got to make sure that the play­ers stay pos­i­tive, and that’s part of my job to do that, and the back­room staff and I will all do that, and we will be on hand to make sure that they dust them­selves down and put the re­sults be­hind them, and now it’s all con­cen­tra­tion to try and get a good re­sult against Ja­maica.”

“We re­spect Ja­maica, but we don’t fear them, and I don’t think that they are in a re­al healthy place them­selves de­spite the re­sult to­day (4-0 win over Bermu­da), and they won’t be re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to play­ing us against if we per­form the way we can per­form. Cer­tain­ly if you look at the sec­ond half, I think that they know they are go­ing to be in for a very tough game, and to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, that’s how it should be. There is no easy part or easy road to qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup, and tonight is just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of how the chal­lenge ahead is, and we have to make sure that we are at our best at all times.”

Yorke: Still some time be­fore grand­par­ent law comes in­to play

Asked his thoughts on the an­nounce­ment by Phillip Watts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, that Cab­i­net has agreed to ap­prove the Cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Amend­ment Bill 2025 and that the bill is to be in­tro­duced in par­lia­ment at its ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Yorke said he thinks it will take about a month be­fore it comes in­to play but in the mean­time is very hap­py with his squad of play­ers.

The an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter Watts on Thurs­day at a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, is ex­pect­ed to boost fu­ture se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball team tal­ent pool, as it al­lows for play­ers who have T&T grand­parent­age to be con­sid­ered for na­tion­al team se­lec­tion as they seek to qual­i­fy for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup Fi­nals to be joint­ly host­ed in the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

T&T next faces Ja­maica on Tues­day at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Kingston, from 8 pm.

Yorke said, ‘We met the Prime Min­is­ter (Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) re­cent­ly, and she con­veyed to us that there are still some red lines and that there would be some time be­fore every­thing is com­plet­ed, but I’m very hap­py with the squad that we have, and I’m very con­tent, and I think prob­a­bly it’s the clos­est to the strongest team that I have in­her­it­ed since.’

He said, “The boys are Ko­bi (Hen­ry), Jack­ie (Jer­rin), Kaile (Au­vray) and Justin (Obik­wu). These guys have come in and re­al­ly made the team a lot more com­pet­i­tive, so I have got a job on my hands to pick the best teams in such a short space of time.”

“And I don’t think the grand­par­ents’ law will kick in­to ef­fect now. It will prob­a­bly take an­oth­er month or a few weeks be­fore that comes in­to play, but if and when that comes, then we will be ready to go at the op­tions that are avail­able to us, but we can’t think of that now; we have got to dust our­selves down very quick­ly.

“We’ve got a cou­ple of days be­fore we trav­el to Ja­maica, and the game is on Tues­day, so it’s a quick turn­around, and we’ve got to get our minds around it and be brave and ready to go in­to Ja­maica and make sure and try and get a re­sult there as well.”

An up­beat Yorke added, “The mind­set for that game is good; over the last few months we had a lot of good games against Ja­maica, and I think the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two teams is very minute.”