However, on closer examination, Guyana should have won all their matches, to easily go beyond the first round, to achieve what had not been done since 1994 when the-then Under-20 team went to Honduras to vie for a place in the World Cup finals.

Bermuda, Guyana and St Lucia ended with four points from one win each and one draw. Trinidad & Tobago were one point below from three drawn games, the only team that did not lose a match. But the Twin Island Republic boys did not win one either.

The victories, however, followed no familiar pattern. Bermuda beat St Lucia, 5-0; Guyana then defeated the hosts 1-0; and St Lucia took care of Guyana 3-2.

St Lucia were the ones who showed progressive improvement during the tournament. They lost miserably to Bermuda in their first match, then held Trinidad & Tobago to a goalless draw in the second, and beat a lethargic Guyana side in the last.

The boys from Helen Island had only two weeks before meeting the US Virgin Islands in the preliminaries, hosting both and recording 15-0 and 1-0 victories.

But the coach said the opponents were very weak and would not count the encounters as viable exposure. After then, the team had no other international matches until they faced Bermuda.

The hosts had been in training together since May, after the authorities screened players in April, according to secretary of the Bermuda Football Association, David Sabir. But the players were not encamped.

An international series was especially arranged in July to give the team exposure and the BFA invited Canada, Jamaica and Barbados as opponents.

“We placed last in the tournament, but that was the way we planned it. We wanted to give the boys the experience of losing to stronger teams,” Sabir told Chronicle Sport.

By clinching the group place, Bermuda are probably reaping the fruits of seeds sown when the BFA began concentrating on developing the game from the grassroots - at the youth level.

“We scraped international participation at the senior level and focused on youth development, that is, starting at the grassroots,” Sabir said.

The team had depth and the coach could substitute players without any noticeable change in the team’s performance.

Trinidad & Tobago arranged a home-and-away series with Barbados, with two matches played on both legs. They won the two on home soil, won one in Barbados and drew the other.

The team trained together for some six weeks after about two months vying for selection.

Guyana’s squad went into camp the very Friday school closed on July 5 for intense training for the opening game of the preliminary with Dominica on August 4. Between the two legs, the team journeyed to Suriname to meet several teams there, including the hosts and Aruba.

After the August 18 second leg here, the team went back in camp on September 2.

The Guyana Football Federation left no stones unturned in trying to give the best administrative support, unheard of with previous teams.

One person associated with training of the players estimated that the GFF was spending about $5 million a month for the encampment.

But the Guyana side did not show the commitment of winning the series. They had the glorious chance of humbling Trinidad & Tobago, but settled for a draw.

The best match of the entire series was the performance in the Bermuda/Guyana clash. The game was intense from start to finish and victory could have gone either side, but Guyana had the extra polish to win, showing tremendous character that was short-lived.

In a stupefying turnaround, Guyana looked so lethargic against St Lucia especially in the first half that one could not believe that was same team that played Trinidad & Tobago and Bermuda.

The officials need to look beyond the game and unearth what went wrong that a team in which so much was invested could not deliver when it mattered - playing the weakest of teams in the series. This was one time when technical direction could not be blamed.