MANAGER of Guyana’s Golden Jaguars Football team, Lawrence `Sparrow’ Griffith, said he is not expecting too much from the team that will start their campaign in this year’s Parbo Bier Cup Championship which gets under way in Paramaribo, Suriname tomorrow.

In an exclusive interview with Chronicle Sport on Sunday, one day before the team’s departure for Suriname, Griffith said like the other participating teams (Suriname), Antigua and French Guiana), the locals will be looking to win the overall title of the bi-annual tournament “but we have to look at the reality that we have an actually new team, since more than half of the members will be making their international debut”.

But Griffith was quick to add, “We have some seasoned players like the captain Howard Lowe and goalkeeper Ronson Williams, Eddie Gomes, Emerick Williams, Philbert Moffatt and Dwayne Jacobs. The others are all relatively new.”

Griffith opined that the players that make up the 20-man touring party are drawn from clubs that do not teach basic football “so when they come to the national grid they (players) don’t have the technical knowledge, so we have to start from the beginning, teaching them the basics of the game.”

He lamented the fact that preparations for this tournament only started one week ago and as far as he is concerned, “it was not enough preparation time for such a tournament”.

He said the team’s fitness is suspect since they were not encamped for a long enough period “but they are the best in their respective clubs and so we can expect them to hold their own against the opposition.”

He said the squad was put together by a number of coaches who initially selected 26 players, but only 22 turned up for training and two others had to be called in to make up a 24-member squad and after a one-week training period, the final 20 were named.

He informed that top striker Dwight Peters did not turn up for training from day one and so he was omitted from the final squad of 20.

According to Griffith, he learnt from sources that Peters said he has to make the squad regardless if he reported for training from day one or day five. “So he has this kind of big boy attitude and when you hear coaches blaming selectors for not selecting certain players, it’s not the selectors’ fault, since the players themselves see themselves as being big players.”

He said most of the 20-member team were drawn from Georgetown clubs, but there are some players who are from out of Georgetown but who play for Georgetown Football Association’s affiliated clubs.

Asked if he has any knowledge about the other teams that the locals will be facing during the tournament, Griffith said he knows that the Suriname team went to Holland for preparations and only returned about two weeks ago.

He said head coach of the Golden Jaguars, Paul James, said he has been working on the team’s finishing over the past week and they have shown some improvement in this department.

Guyana will open their quest for championship honours tomorrow when they come up against Antigua.