Jones believes Fenwick can do T&T job

“For T&T foot­ball, it is good to have some sta­bil­i­ty at the head. The things they have out­lined for the fu­ture, in terms of the train­ing camps and what not, hope­ful­ly, that is some­thing that will be so­lid­i­fied, the in­vest­ment that is nec­es­sary, the struc­ture that is nec­es­sary and maybe the fu­ture of T&T foot­ball will be in good hands,” Jones ex­plained.

Jones be­lieves Fen­wick, who was ap­point­ed to re­place the sacked Den­nis Lawrence ear­li­er this week, will bring with him his pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ex­pe­ri­ence.

“We need to change the cul­ture of the tour­na­ment mind­set and we need to start hav­ing that con­tin­u­ous pro­gramme, con­tin­u­ous plan­ning, not on­ly for the na­tion­al teams but al­so the club pro­gramme, acad­e­my pro­gramme, the school pro­gramme, every­thing needs to change at this point, where we start think­ing about long term and not short term.”

How­ev­er, Jones does not feel Fen­wick will have it all easy at the start. Not­ing, the UK coach has been very crit­i­cal of oth­ers coach­es over the last decade, Jones said, “He (Fen­wick) would have a lot of con­vinc­ing to do be­cause he’s been here for quite a while and has been on the oth­er side of the fence. He did a lot of crit­i­cis­ing of teams, play­ers and coach­es but now it’s his turn to man­age. So he’ll have to con­vince peo­ple and win them over.”

For­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er, now coach Travis Mul­raine al­so be­lieves Fen­wick’s se­lec­tion was a good one. How­ev­er, he says he will stay away from mak­ing any pre­dic­tions, say­ing we will see what will hap­pen in time to come.

Mul­raine, a for­mer Matu­ra Re­Unit­ed and Guaya Unit­ed coach who played un­der Fen­wick at San Juan Jabloteh in the T&T Pro League, said Fen­wick is def­i­nite­ly de­serv­ing of a chance, hav­ing won ti­tles with Jabloteh, Cen­tral FC and be­ing ex­cel­lent at un­earthing and de­vel­op­ing new tal­ent.

“What I think Fen­wick needs to do at this point in time is to bring in fresh blood in the team and do away with some of the old play­ers. He will al­so need to en­sure that he gets the for­eign-based play­ers to toe the line, which will en­cour­age the oth­ers to fol­low,” Mul­raine said.

He de­scribed Fen­wick as a very good coach de­fen­sive­ly, who likes to have pace in his at­tack.

“For many years, our prob­lem has been our de­fence. We have been mak­ing many blun­ders in the de­fence, caus­ing us to con­cede a lot of soft goals, so I be­lieve Fen­wick should do well in that area,” he said.

Fen­wick, who was over­looked back in 2016 for the top coach­ing job as the TTFA went with Lawrence, was this time cho­sen ahead of a num­ber of top in­ter­na­tion­al coach­es, in­clud­ing Eng­land’s Si­mon Mc Men­e­my, Stephen Con­stan­tine and Pe­ter Tay­lor, by the new TTFA Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee head­ed by Kei­th Look Loy.

Mean­while, for­mer North East Stars, FC San­ta Rosa and na­tion­al coach Derek King, who now plies his trade with Cana­di­an Pre­mier League club Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers, along­side an­oth­er for­mer T&T coach Stephen Hart, was yes­ter­day named as Fen­wick’s as­sis­tant. It is un­der­stood King was ac­tu­al­ly cho­sen by Fen­wick and the TTFA board will have to rat­i­fy his se­lec­tion at its next meet­ing in ear­ly Jan­u­ary