Trinidad and Tobago’s Defence Force football team which will oppose top Linden club Milerock in the Caribbean Football Union second round club championships says that they are here to win the first game of the home and away tie.
“As with any team we come to win,” Major Malcolm Nedd, manager of the Trinidad team told Stabroek Sport yesterday.
The two teams will battle tomorrow at the Mackenzie Sports Club ground in a match which is more of a must win situation for the locals especially since they lost their opening round game against Suriname’s Inter Moengatapoe in the first round.
According to Nedd while the home team is relatively unknown to them “they will not be taken for granted.”
Nedd along with Coach Sergeant Ross Russell and Fleet Chief Officer David Cumberbatch yesterday visited Linden to see the match venue.
According to Nedd, although it is his team’s first visit to Guyana some of the players have played here before on attachment to the Guyana Defence Force in the annual Christmas Kashif and Shanghai football tournament.
Nedd was impressed with the venue and although he said there was room for improvement declared:”Based on the locality, I wish we had this as our home ground back in Trinidad because we would have done a lot of development work.”
He added: “Honestly, again it is all about infrastructural development, it is about financial support from the corporate sponsors or even the government.”
According to Nedd, the Defence Force football team was established in 1974.
Nedd said the club has won numerous league titles in Trinidad and Tobago and
reached the quarter-finals of the CFU tournament against River Plate of Argentina.
Asked how they will approach tomorrow’s game Nedd said:”We have learnt from our mistakes and we know a few players from Milerock FC who would have played football in TT Pro Leagues and they would not be taken for granted.”
Nedd said the Trinidad team was a mixture of junior and senior players.
“Our team would have had five to 10 players who would have had either junior level experience or senior level experience. So we have quite a lot of national and international mix in the team. All of the players of course are serving members of the Defence Force.”
“We intend to give a creditable performance in CFU and by extension CONCACAF because we have also been slotted to represent the Americas in the 5th edition of the Military World Games that we qualified for in Suriname.”
And quizzed who were the star players in the team Nedd responded with:”The entire Defence Force team, there is no one star player, that is the depth of our team.”
