Bermuda?s squad for next week?s Digicel Cup games will be named after their final training session tomorrow ? with assistant national coach Paul Scope insisting last night it will be strongest he has ever worked with.

The decision by the Caribbean Football Union to postpone the tournament involving Bermuda, the US and British Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic by a week has caught the team?s management off-guard and prompted an unwelcome delay in the announcement of the squad.

Along with his boss Kyle Lightbourne, Scope has spent the last few days frantically trying to confirm that all the overseas players were still available despite the change of plans and they are still not yet in a position to provide a definitive list of the 19 or 20 who will travel.

Scope, however, was prepared to confirm last night that as expected North Village?s Kentoine Jennings will captain the team in their three, first-stage Gold Cup qualifying games in the US Virgin Islands while pro strikers Khano Smith and John Barry Nusum will partner each other up front.

Timmy Figuerido and Nigel Burgess are to be the goalkeepers while Kevin Richards, Tyrell Burgess and striker Stephen Astwood ? who is still searching for a professional contract ? will also travel along with Under-20 captain Keishen Bean.

Three players at college in the US who would have been selected ? Taurean Manders, Logan Alexander and Devrae Tankard ? are to stay with their college teams for three crucial NCAA conference games which their coaches were extremely reluctant for them to miss, added Scope.

Meanwhile, Damon Ming has been allowed to stay in England to try and force his way back into the Hayes first team after recently being dropped.

Despite the squad?s delayed announcement and limited preparation, Scope said he was still ?very excited? about the players they would be taking to the Caribbean.

?I think whatever the final squad is, we will have a really good bunch of players together and there?s no reason why if we play to our potential we cannot qualify for the next round as winners of the group,? said Scope, who has been Lightbourne?s deputy ever since the former Coventry City striker took over the top job.

?The date change has meant that we?ve not been able to include a few of the guys at college in the US, which is a shame because although they might not have started, with three games in five days they would certainly have seen some action. But we do not want to interrupt anybody?s educational or sporting progress so we were prepared to let them get on with what they had to do.

?It?s no secret that we?ve not had as many warm-up games as we would have liked in an ideal world, but we?re all used to working with limited funds and the preparation we?ve had is fairly typical of what we?ve experienced since Kyle and I have been involved with the national team.

?I haven?t got any concerns about fitness levels at this stage. In picking the squad we are deliberately going to make fitness a big factor in the decisions we take and I think anybody looking at the list of players we will choose will agree that most of the lads have a high level of natural fitness and should be very capable of dealing with the workload.?

As for the potential potency of the Nusum-Smith strike-force, Scope said he was looking forward to watching these two talented pros combine.

?We?re very confident that these two will work well together and cause problems for the opposition,? he said.

?I know Khano will be chomping at the bit to play because he has not had as many minutes for the Revolution as he would have liked so far this season, and John Barry?s been back with us for a while now after finishing the outdoor season in the States (for the Virginia Beach Mariners) and is looking very sharp and a lot trimmer than I?ve seen him in the past.

?But all throughout the team we?re going to have quality and given the likely standard of the opposition, I?m expecting us to be difficult to handle.?

One potential stumbling block for Bermuda will be the quality of the pitch on the main island St. Thomas, which is reportedly on a par with some of the worst club surfaces here.

And having done all their training on the ?carpet? at the National Sports Centre, Scope admitted there was going to have to be some tactical adjustments to suit the conditions

?Obviously both teams have to play on it, but as a team that likes to play a passing game it?s obviously not ideal for us,? he said.

?But we?re getting down there 48 hours before the first game on the Wednesday and we?ll have a couple of training sessions to get a feel for the surface and work out a system and the tactics which we feel are going to work best.?

Bermuda?s last Digicel Cup campaign two years ago in St. Vincent was mired in controversy when Lightbourne?s team failed to qualify after being beaten 2-0 in the final game by the British Virgin Islands, who were accused of fielding ineligible players.

Bermuda?s appeal was ultimately thrown out by the CFU because it was not made in time, though it was reported that the BVI players involved in the game were subsequently banned from representing them.