Jamaica’s Under-17 men’s coach Andrew Edwards says his team’s preparation for the decisive Caribbean Football Union (CFU) World Cup qualifying play-offs in Trinidad and Tobago next month has hit a proverbial rough in the road.

With just about two weeks to kick off of the September 16-25 championship, the Jamaican tactician has expressed concerns over the unavailability of his overseas-based players during the crucial pre-tournament phase.

“The main challenge is that all of the kids based overseas, including team captain Jeremy Verley who just took up a scholarship, are having difficulty getting out of school, not just for the preparatory camp, but for the tournament itself,” Edwards told the Jamaica Observer recently.

“There are state rules in the USA that says that the kids should not be out of school for more than 10 days per year and we are talking about the beginning of the school year, so there are challenges,” he added.

Through the parents, and all other available avenues of intervention, the coaching staff is working in trying to establish a soft landing in a situation that can potentially have a deep impact on pre-tournament preparation and the play-off itself.

“We have been having dialogues with the schools and are trying to work things through. Our initial plan was to get everybody in by the 28th of August, and as it is now, only Damani Osei will come in shortly after of the seven overseas players including Verley.

“And he (Osei) has to go back on the 4th of September to get school started, then returns on the 9th. As for the others, Brandon McGlashan from Canada will arrive Wednesday or Thursday of this week and he should be all right once he comes in. The others we expect around the 9th of September, but Verley will definitely not join the preparatory camp, but will join the team directly in Trinidad,” Edwards explained.

The other overseas-based players, who are all in school, and are likely to be impacted by the scheduling are defender Kendall Edwards, forwards Cobi Atkinson and Chad Letts and midfielder Blake White.

Meanwhile, Edwards says preparation for the Caribbean finals resumed on August 9, in earnest with the local-based players five days each week.

“We have been working up to the Thursday of each week since then… we have brought the boys in on Sundays and have been training through to Thursday,” he noted.

But the Manchester High School daCosta Cup coach has expressed disappointment with recent results of friendly matches, particularly a “demoralising” defeat to a Manning Cup campaigner.

“In terms of results, they have not gone our way as we have played two Premier League teams in preparation and we have lost both those games 5-3, and then the most recent game against Excelsior we lost 5-2, and that was a huge disappointment,” Edwards lamented.

“While it can be understood to lose against the bigger men in the Premier League with experience and some of them being former senior national players, but it’s different when you play a schoolboy team,” he added.

The coach, who has been working with this age group for some time, said while valuables lessons have been learnt from these games, he expressed concerns with the overall attitude of some players.

“I thought the attitude of the boys were very discouraging to say the least, but nonetheless, there are a lot of positives that we can take solace from as we have been improving physically steadily.

“As I have said, whenever the boys go home and come back they seem to have lost some of their physical fitness and that is a disappointment given that all of them are eager to leave camp to join up with their respective school teams, and it raises the question to what extent the school coaches are pushing these youngsters to get the best out of them,” Edwards noted.

Even though the results of recent matches have gone against the Young Reggae Boyz, Edwards has found comfort in the regularity with which the team has been scoring goals.

“Going forward I think we are in good stead as we have been scoring consistently, so the major task in front of us now is to tighten up at the back, and unfortunately part of the problem with that is some of our better defensive players are based overseas right now, so we are short in that department, but we are trying to get the so-called second-string players up to par in the event they have to step up and deliver,” he stated.

In his drive to bolster the team for a tough group in Trinidad where Jamaica face Bermuda, Haiti and the hosts, Edwards had the opportunity to have six new overseas-based players audition for the team. But that, in his assessment, was mostly a disappointing process.

“On the resumption of camp on August 9, we had some six first-timers coming in from the USA, Canada and England, and of that lot, only one has made an impression that caused us to want to bring him back and that is Clayton Brown out of Canada…

“The others, I believe, are not yet at a level to help the team, so we are not focusing on them right now. The problem with Clayton, like the others as well, is that he didn’t come in with a Jamaican passport, so he cannot be considered for Trinidad, but all things being well, we will continue to look at him in the future,” Edwards said.

Jamaica’s Under-17 footballers are seeking a third successful World Cup campaign, having qualified for New Zealand in 1999 and Mexico in 2011.

On that quest for India 2017, the Young Boyz got to this stage of the journey by topping their zone of the CFU first-round play-offs in the US Virgin Islands in July by beating Guyana 4-1, Antigua and Barbuda 3-1 and the hosts 9-0.

From the eight-nation Caribbean finals in Trinidad, five teams will progress to the CONCACAF stage, with the top-four set to be the confederation’s representatives in India next summer.