by EZRA STUART

DON'T BLAME the Barbados Defence Force's (BDF) training for their footballers' non-attendance at national practice.

Long-serving coach of the BDF's football programme Kevin Millard has made it clear that the absence of five of his players from national training on Saturday morning at the YMCA had nothing to do with the BDF's separate training.

"The players are using the BDF training as an excuse. The national players have not trained with the BDF since they returned from St Kitts. We did not have a training session on Saturday.

"As far as I am concerned the national players have no reason not to attend training," he told NATIONSPORT yesterday.

In a SUNDAY SUN story, Barbados' assistant coach/trainer Jerry Skeete expressed concern about the failure of the BDF quintet of Jonathan Straker, Riviere Williams, Barry Skeete, Rohan Hall and Mario Harte to turn up for national training.

Millard said he would strongly recommend that the Barbados Football Association (BFA) contact the BDF directly to find out why the five players did not attend training.

But he also wants the BFA to ensure that correspondence is sent to the BDF requesting the players to attend national training to avoid any further hiccups.

"Why should I call training to stop these boys from attending national training?" he asked.

"My position has always been that the national team comes first and everybody should be making maximum effort to make sure the team is successful, as they stand an excellent chance of qualifying for the finals."

Barbados will journey to Cuba in two weeks' time to oppose Suriname on October 23, the host country on October 25, and the Netherlands Antilles on October 27 in the second stage of the Digicel Caribbean Championships.

"We should be able to organise communication between the coaching staff and myself to ensure that there is no conflict with the training sessions.

"I have told the Barbados coaches that they need to call me and tell me what they are looking to do, so that we can organise our training around theirs.

"I have all week to prepare my team, so I can make alternative arrangements but if nobody tells me anything, I can't do anything about it," he said.

Millard further said he has always encouraged players from the BDF Sports Programme to attend national training whenever they are invited and that he has no authority to stop them from going.