By Iva Wharton
Despite their last minute notification Western Tigers Football Club is ready to participate in the fourth annual Inter-Guiana Cup which starts today in Suriname.
So says vice president of the club Brentnol Bourne.
“All we had to do was shift gears and focus differently for Suriname instead of home,” says Bourne who told Stabroek Sport that the team was training for most of the year for a tournament to be run by the Guyana Football federation which was subseqyuently postponed.
The team will leave Guyana today for Suriname where they will contest the fourth annual Inter-Guiana Cup alongside two teams from host Suriname and one team from French Guiana.
The competition kicks off tomorrow. Western Tiger’s participation in the tournament was as a result of Alpha United declining the invitation to participate. Western Tigers is the second ranked team in the Guyana Football Federation Super League with Alpha United being number one.
The four day competition will see Guyana play three matches; two against Suriname which will be fielding two teams as the host country and one against French Guiana. Western Tigers will play its first match tomorrow but Bourne said he was unable to say which team they will be playing against as they were not privy to the fixtures. Bourne said that despite the team being in training for most of the year, he felt that they still needed more time to polish up their tactical work.
“Because you will find that although you are training because of the weather conditions, certain tactical work you cannot do properly because the field is soggy.”
Acting president of the GFF, Franklin Wilson said that Guyana has never won the championship, “but I am hoping that Western would break the jinx and come out victors in this tournament, but for you to do that you have to be focused and disciplined.”
Bourne said that this tournament was Western Tiger’s first international tournament as a team after 16 years. The team’s last international tournament was in 1996 when they competed in the CONCACAF tournament. “I am saying although as a team it will be the first time for many players to be competing internationally, it is not the first time individual players as they would have played overseas as part of the national team.”
Meanwhile, yesterday, BK International Incorporated presented a cheque valued at $500,000 to the team to assist with their expenses in travelling to neighbouring Suriname.
