I am looking forward to the World Cup qualifying draw this morning and I will follow the event live from Germany.

The format for our CONCACAF region ensures that our Intra-Caribbean round home and away opponent will be drawn from the pool consisting of British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Guyana, Anguilla, US Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands and Montserat.

These are exciting times for our players as they have at least four matches to look forward to in the very near future.

The upcoming Barbados matches provide the perfect opportunity for the players to experience international football prior to the World Cup qualifiers. This is extremely important as the difference between domestic and international football is huge.

Consequently, it is vital that the players become accustomed to playing where the demands on their technique, insight, physical presence and mental strength are more challenging.

The matches against Barbados will also provide the coaching staff with the opportunity to assess the players? abilities under more stressful conditions. The overall outcomes are technical, tactical, physical and psychological adaptations for the players and technical staff.

The ten lucky winners of the home and away Intra-Caribbean round matches face the mouthwatering prospect of being drawn against CONCACAF giants such as Costa Rica, Canada, USA, Jamaica, Honduras, Trinidad and El Salvador among others.

I believe this is good for the game in our region as the smaller countries such as ours can experience competing against the larger nations and, providing this is done more frequently, will stand to improve the smaller countries.

The upcoming World Cup campaign is the beginning of what is planned to be a more continuous international programme for the Bermuda Football Association. This bodes well for our senior players who must aspire to compete in the international football arena as well as our youth football players who can chart and make steady progress towards their own international football futures.

This has been attempted before and it is important for all of the football stakeholders in Bermuda to provide the necessary resources to ensure that we are successful in this vision.

These resources include technical expertise (high level coaching), the best facilities and many top international football experiences with major funding as the foundation.

I am very pleased with the commitment of the players thus far. Their potential is immense. It is important that they realise that more is required if their actual performance is to match their potential.

I have every confidence in our players? ability to perform admirably for Bermuda. This is an important period for the rebuilding of international football for Bermuda.