Gilligham defender Brent Sancho, goalkeeper Kelvin Jack and Southampton strike Kenwyne Jones were declared one hundred percent fit for Saturday’s encounter against Bahrain after undergoing fitness tests on Tuesday morning by team sports physio Zeph Nicholas at the Hasely Crawford Stadium.
The news was welcomed by head coach Leo Beenhakker who completed a 90-minute session which was opened to the media in the evening period starting around 5:30pm. Soon after the “Warriors” left, the opposition arrived and also had a workout at the match venue.
“Everybody is on board now and the most important part is everybody is fit. The three of them responded very well so they are one hundred percent available,” Beenhakker said.
Sancho and Jones were coming off hamstring injuries while Jack had been nursing a knee injury since the 2-1 win over Mexico.
Beenhakker had all his players out under the sun from 9:30 am with the exception of skipper Dwight Yorke and Shaka Hislop.
During the morning session, Beenhakker was able to get sufficient time as planned with his players but later took them off after deciding not to risk any damage to the pitch following a sudden downpour came down and lasted for close to 20 minutes.
“Things were normal today, more recuperation training and playing together a little bit. Then tomorrow we start the training sessions in relation to how we have to play on Saturday,” the Dutchman said.
“We are not going to change anything of course. Why should I change anything,” he responded to a question as to how he felt T&T should match up against the Asians.
“We saw what we did from the beginning of May up until Mexico. Little by little the team was growing and was playing better and better and this is the result of a great game versus Mexico. Of course what we want to do or try to do is start again this week where we ended up against Mexico. If we can realize it, I don’t know because the clubs were at least four or five weeks with their clubs, but that’s the idea,” the optimistic sounding T&T boss added.
Yorke turned up for the second session after arriving just after midday while Hislop had dinner with his teammates following his London flight in the evening. The only hiccup was Carlos Edwards stepping awkwardly and twisting his ankle on an uneven piece of the surface which stadium management promised to have fixed by Wednesday.
Any distractions for the players maybe and if so how they are dealing with it?
“No! First of all I do what I have to do and secondly the only way we can do it is to focus on the game. The only thing what we can do real is try to play a very good game and strong game and beat Bahrain. The rest of stuff is only for losing energy and time," Beenhakker said.
He added that he was not worry about having less time to settle in Bahrain for the second leg next Wednesday compared to Bahrain’s week-long stay here, simply because of T&T’s players being based across the globe.
“They are all young and very well prepared guys.”