Yorke: Time to lick wounds and bounce back
By Shaun Fuentes (TTFF)Trinidad and Tobago Senior Team captain Dwight Yorke said he had the most excruciating time having to look on from the sidelines at this country’s two recent encounters in the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign.
But despite picking up one point from the two games against Honduras and United States, the former Manchester United man is still confident of this country’s chances of advancing to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. But the journey would be far from smooth sailing from here on and he has given the rest of the team an ultimatum ahead of their next qualifying match against Costa Rica on June 6 at the Hasely Crawford Stadium.
Yorke touched on several areas and was an emotional skipper when he addressed the team in the dressing room after Wednesday’s 3-0 defeat in Nashville, taking up the mantle after being given the go ahead by head coach Francisco Maturana.
“I hope that my words haven’t gone in vain and in six/seven weeks I’ll know that because I’ll be involved and leading the team from the front so it would be interesting to see how that goes. I’ll be able to tell a bit clearly… but that’s besides the point… it was a message that I needed to say in a team way that everyone realizes that we got a hard battle ahead of us and we need to take stock and work extremely hard as a group of players to give ourselves the best possible chance of getting the results and advancing to the World Cup,” Yorke told TTFF Media after the game.
He added that at times he couldn’t control his emotions while viewing the game from up in the sky boxes at LP Field.
“It’s a huge disappointment with the way the game ended. But we need to take stock and regroup again because we didn’t perform anything like we are capable of . So it was a little bit hard to take sitting on the sideline like myself. Viewing the game up in the box was not very comfortable for me. I thought it was one of those things I would be able to cope with a little bit better but I haven’t been able to do so. My emotions got the better of me. I haven’t been in this position in a number of years so I wasn’t quite sure how to react. To see the lads out there and not be able to contribute was hard to swallow.
But looking ahead to the rest of the campaign, with T&T on two points, one more than they were at this same stage in the 2006 campaign and with four more home matches, also one more than this time in the last campaign, the Sunderland assistant coach said it ‘s far from time to throw in the towel.
“We’ve got to lick our wounds and start again. We’ve got two crucial games coming up and we have got six or seven weeks to prepare for it. I think once we can do that and then playing at home should be okay for us. I still feel we have a very good chance of turning it around
“There are one or two positive things coming out of the last match if there’s anything to hang on to….Hyland seems to be a good lad in the middle of the park. We have got to take these and go forward with it because we are a team capable of producing much better performances and results
“We just know that one win will put us back into the fray again. Hopefully everyone will learn from it and come back stronger.”
And as for a message to the supporters of the “Soca Warriors” Yorke asked of them to stay faithful.
“We know that a good performance and result against Costa Rica will turn things around and we are capable of it. They need to stay positive and we need their support as much as anything else even more so now. They need to encourage the players in a positive way and continue supporting the team,” Yorke concluded.
The T&T team returned home on Thursday night inclusive of the home based players along with Walsall goalkeeper Clayton Ince who returned following the death of his sister. She passed away on Wednesday evening. The overseas pros returned to their respective clubs in Europe.
Dwight Yorke reacts to the loss<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/6wGCibX173g" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/6wGCibX173g</a>]]>
