Dennis Lawrence is well known for heading the winning goal against Bahrain which took this twin island state straight into the FIFA Germany world Cup Finals 2006.
The lanky central defender was chosen by the technical committee of the T&T Football Association (TTFA) eventually after accepting the resignation of Belgian Tom Saintfiet some two weeks ago.
The deliberation period which existed before making the final choice leaves me with the impression that there was serious dialogue with a few contenders and maybe numerous essential questions of absolute importance and digging deep into their coaching experience had to be dealt with.
Taking into consideration the accepted mistake by the TTFA when deciding upon the choice of the flamboyant Belgian, whose bark turned out to be much more powerful than his bite, and left nothing to show his worth as a coach, we need a real coach.
So my congratulations go out to Dennis for accepting the job of coaching our national team for the first time.
I have to admit that while I can vouch for the professional approach which the San Juan defender showed on the field of play during the World Cup, his coaching ability could only be described in writing, especially as he was not a head coach on any of his assignments.
Clearly, the decision makers must have done deep assessment of Dennis’s work from the bench and I will trust them on this occasion.
I do not wish to hear of any promises made by the president similar to the one he made to the fly-by-night bargain dealing coach who travelled for thousands of miles and did not know the length of his contract.
It will be fair to assume that the former national player may have learned much of the fundamentals when sitting next to the English coaches with whom he worked and probably sometimes used the football language commented by the “gaffas”.
It is close to three weeks since the resignation of the former coach and it is a pity to see that an interim coach (or even the assistant named coaches) have not been placed in temporary positions in order to work with the locally-based players who may be pleased to have the coaches take a close look at their real quality as local professionals.
With eight weeks before the continuation of the Hexagonal qualifying, every session will have had immense value and the thought of a few relevant opponents, is vital for the preparation of the squad.
It would have been great for the technical committee to recognise the need for at least three or four practice matches such as Venezuela, Jamaica, Canada and any one of the final four qualifiers in the African Nations Cup.
Our team needs to find opponents who also need to sharpen their performance levels for competition of similar quality of the Hexagonal standard.
Because of my many years of assessing coaches, national and club, I will certainly cast a look at our local choice with the hope that the exposure afforded him by the English coaches will bring much valuable information to our own.
We need to support him totally and demand that the TTFA give him the respect of getting a few friendlies which I previously mentioned and a contract which is not filled with the two-match dismissal clause in advance of the giants - Mexico and Panama.