National football coach Kyle Lightbourne and his assistant Paul Scope will delay naming their squad for next week’s Digicel Cup until the last minute as they sweat over a couple of injury worries.

Inspirational captain and central defender Kentoine Jennings is in a race against time to be fit for the team’s departure for Trinidad on Friday after pulling his hamstring last week in a Dudley Eve Cup game against eventual champions Somerset Trojans.

And after outshining his highly-rated national team colleague Kwame Steede during Trojans’ sensational 3-0 victory in Monday’s final against Devonshire Cougars, combative midfielder Jelani Scott is reportedly suffering from a knock to the back of his knee which could take a while to heal.

Boulevard’s Stanton Lewis — almost certain to have started at centre back alongside Jennings in Bermuda’s opening game against Haiti on January 7 — has already been ruled out with a knee injury, creating the very real prospect that the team will have to qualify for the Caribbean Cup finals without their two first-choice centre backs.

“Kyle and I met this morning to discuss the squad and potential starting elevens,” Scope said yesterday.

“We’ve already got about 15 definites in mind, the nucleus if you like, but we’re probably going to wait right up until the last minute before we decide on the final three.

“We’ve got about 25 guys at training at the moment and we’re still waiting on one or two injury concerns — so we’re going to give those guys as much time as possible to prove their fitness.

“Obviously it would be a lot easier to have everybody 100 percent fit and available so we could go ahead and name the squad well in advance. But that’s just not the case here and who we take depends a lot on how the injuries pan out.

“If a defender is injured and can’t make the trip we’ll have to take an extra defender, and it’s the same situation with the forwards. So the sensible thing to do at the moment is wait it out.

“What I would say though is that if we get through the qualifying stages, we’re going to need around 22 or 23 players for the finals so those not included in the initial 18 may still get a chance to join up with the squad if we get past Haiti.”

With the Dominican Republic announcing they would be dropping out of the competition over the weekend because of a lack of funds, Bermuda now face two consecutive games against the traditional Caribbean powerhouses to decide who advances through to the finals, where they could play three round-robin games against Martinique, Barbados and Trinidad.