Sidebar

28
Thu, Mar

Warrick condems De Four attack on WoLF.
Typography

Su­san Joseph-War­rick, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Women's League Foot­ball (WoLF) has hit back at se­nior na­tion­al women's foot­ball team coach, Ste­fan De Four af­ter he blamed the play­ers lack of fit­ness and sub­par per­for­mances of the lo­cal league.

De Four was in charge of the se­nior women's team, which failed to ad­vance from its Caribbean Foot­ball Union Women's Qual­i­fy­ing Round-Robin Pool A qual­i­fiers which al­so in­volved St Kitts/Nevis, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, and Aru­ba.

T&T which host­ed the qual­i­fiers at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va end­ed third in the five-team round-robin se­ries af­ter beat­ing Aru­ba 3-0 and An­tigua & Bar­bu­da 5-0, and draw­ing with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic 0-0 af­ter los­ing 4-1 to pool win­ners, St Kitts/Nevis.

In a re­lease to the me­dia via email Joseph-War­rick said: TT WOLF wish­es to con­demn the at­tack and blame hurled at its or­ga­ni­za­tion by coach Ste­fan De Four, for the lack of fit­ness and sub­par per­for­mance of Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Women's team in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Olympic Qual­i­fiers held in Trinidad.

The re­lease reads: "A bad car­pen­ter blames his tools. Coach De Four had screen­ing for our lo­cal girls since mid- Au­gust when he be­gan train­ing with the Se­nior ladies 6 weeks be­fore the tour­na­ment, not 10 days as he would like us to be­lieve.

What did he and his staff do to im­prove the fit­ness of the girls?

Our League fin­ished on Au­gust 24th. He had the girls weeks be­fore that. Yes, our sea­son was short this sea­son (11games) and Yes, it needs to be longer and it will be go­ing for­ward.

But Coach De Four needs to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the team's fail­ure and his short­com­ings in team prepa­ra­tion, play­er se­lec­tion and tac­tics.

Did he se­lect our best TT WOLF play­ers - our top goalscor­er, our top goal­keep­er did they fea­ture?

Why nott?

Were they black­list­ed?

TT WOLF has and is do­ing its part to in­crease the women's play­er pool and in­crease the lev­el of play af­ford­ed to our women who go on to our var­i­ous na­tion­al teams, uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges abroad.

How many TT WOLF games did coach De Four see? 2...3.

Who were our best de­fend­ers, mid­field­ers, for­wards?

Mr De­Four - Did you in­vite them as you did our for­eign-based girls?

What about their lev­el of fit­ness. Who are you go­ing to blame for their per­for­mance or lack of?

It ap­pears that none of our na­tion­al coach­es wants to shoul­der the blame when our teams (Men, Women and boys) fall short or turn in poor per­for­mances. It's al­ways the play­ers, the schools, the clubs and now TT WOLF at fault.

NO, Mr De­Four, look in the mir­ror. Mr De­Four, you should not on­ly apol­o­gize to TT WOLF, but it's play­ers and clubs, who feed all na­tion­al pro­grammes. We con­tin­ue to have the ma­jor women's foot­ball league in T&T and pos­si­bly the Caribbean de­vel­op­ing ju­nior and se­nior play­ers. We are do­ing our part, now you do yours."