Recently appointed head coach of the T&T senior women’s football team dubbed the ‘Women Warriors’, Richard Hood says he believes 11 weeks is sufficient time to get the team ready for the CONCACAF 2023 Women’s Gold Cup qualifiers in September.
The 2024 Women’s Gold Cup qualifying tournament featuring 35 CONCACAF Member Associations participating, excluding the two who will compete in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games Tournament (USA and Canada or Jamaica) will take place during the FIFA Women’s International Match Windows of September, October, November and December 2023.
The 35 nations were split into three leagues according to their CONCACAF women’s ranking as of March 2023 and sub-divided into groups.
The Women Warriors will compete in League A as one of the nine top-ranked teams against Mexico and Puerto Rico
Group B will see Canada or Jamaica face off with Panama and Guatemala while Group C will comprise Costa Rica, Haiti, and St Kitts/Nevis.
The 58-year-old Hood, who got the nod from more than 150 applicants from Europe, North America, and here at home from the selection panel which comprised Anton Corneal (Technical Director of T&T Football Association), Jinelle James (Director Women’s Football of T&TFA), Steve David (former national player, Director Point Fortin Civic), Ken Butcher (former Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs and Sports Director at UTT), and Ian Pritchard (Senior Manager, Sport and Recreation, UTT) will have just over two months to get the team ready for their group assignments starting away to Mexico on September 26, before hosting the same team on October 27, followed by matches away to Puerto Rico on December 1, and then at home on December 5.
Hood, a Sergeant in the T&T Police service, begins his duties with immediate effect and will hold discussions this week with the selection panel regarding recommendations for his back room staff which will include critical expertise in the area of performance and video analysis.
With the T&T women’s team, last being in action exactly one year ago (July 12, 2022) at the 2022 CONCACAF Women’s Championship in Mexico, in a 1-0 loss to Panama, and the WoLF league yet to get going this year, after the Ascension Women’s Tournament, Hood when quizzed on where he will be drawing his players from said,” We will be calling on persons who have previously been part of the recent senior programme, as well as the Udner-20 and Under-17s.
He added, “Obviously the two months time frame and lack of activity of our players is not ideal for us going into the qualifiers, but we have 11 weeks and I think it’s enough time for us to organise ourselves.
Looking ahead, Hood noted that he foresees the fitness level of the players as the main downfall in their preparation, and a lot of emphasis will be put on it.”
“Our biggest problem due to the non-activity of most of the girls will be our fitness, especially the locally based players because they have not been playing football, for quite some time we will be really putting a lot of work in there, and once they are up to a satisfactory level, then we will be looking at the tactical awareness as we get closer to the matches,” stated Hood.
At the end of the home-and-away round-robin phase, the top teams in the three League A groups will qualify for the 2024 Women’s Gold Cup Group Stage while the runners-up in each group and the first-place teams in each of the three League B groups will advance to the 2024 Women’s Gold Cup preliminaries.
The three League B groups which comprise the next 12 best-ranked CONCACAF teams are as follows:
Group A: Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Suriname, and Dominica.
Group B: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Martinique.
Group C: Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados.
Reached for comment, Hood who managed to survive a selection process that was first cut to 30, then 14, and then a final three candidates first stated that within the coming days, he will finalise his technical staff to be confirmed by the T&TFA Normalisation Committee.
The senior women’s team coaching position became vacant when the tenure of former England, and USA-based T&T men’s captain and striker Kenwyne Jones was not renewed after ending on August 31, 2022.
In 2021, Welshman James Thomas resigned in October after five months into his tenure as head coach, and a week later, T&T men’s futsal coach Constantine Konstin was hired, only for Jones to be appointed five days later as the interim coach for the period October to November 2021, and that turned into a nine-month contract.
He led the team to the 2022 CONCACAF Women’s Championship which served as a qualifier for the upcoming 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
T&T finished at the bottom of their four-team group after defeats to Canada 6-0, Costa Rica 4-0, and Panama 1-0.
Hood, who was relieved of his head coaching role at the Police FC T&T Premier Football League almost three months ago is no stranger to the T&T coaching set-up having previously served as the head coach of the national women’s team in 2011 for both the Pan American Games and Caribbean Football Union Women’s Olympic Qualifiers, and then in 2016 for the CONCACAF Final Round of Olympic Qualifying competition.
He also led the national Under-20 women’s team to the quarterfinal round of the 2020 CONCACAF Championships and also coached the Under-15 girls’ team, as well as served as an assistant to Norwegian Even Pellerud at the 2010 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup on home soil.