An aura of excitement can be felt among the footballers preparing to depart for the Island Games in Guernsey.

Bermuda are sending an under-23 side coached by John Nusum with the squad training five days a week at the National Sports Centre ahead of their departure for Guernsey on Sunday.

Nusum and his players believe they are well equipped to bring home top honours for the island, with the coach choosing goalkeeper Andrew Kempe, defender Reese Jones and forward Enrique Russell as his leadership group.

“We are all super excited for next week,” Kempe said. “We all feel prepared and confident about going to the Games.”

“We’ve had training camps for the past year and a half, so we’ve been together for a while as a group. A lot of guys have played together through the youth programmes, so we feel like we know each other well.”

Kempe has been thrilled with the way training has gone and declared that they are heading to Guernsey to bring the gold back to Bermuda.

“We have a lot of quality all over the pitch in every position, so I think it’s definitely our goal to bring back the gold medal,” he said.

“I feel positive and I feel excited. The atmosphere around the training ground and the preparations have been top notch. Preparations alone have been different from the men’s team and I feel like because of that, we’re going to have a different outcome this tournament.

“I don’t want to have high hopes but I also do at the same time as I think we are the favourites. We are the only team sending out an under-23 team. Most of the others will be men but I feel we are the team to beat.”

Jones is especially pleased with how the squad have united for a common cause.

“I would say this team has come a long way from the beginning when we first started to train,’’ he said.

“I feel we’ve gelled pretty nicely into the team that we are now and just hoping that we can take the same intensity and progression into the tournament.”

Coach Nusum has been impressed with the level of commitment shown by the players during training sessions.

“It’s been intense, from the beginning. I’ve asked them to bring an intensity to every session,’’ Nusum said.

“That intensity has now translated into them wanting to compete and making sure we are putting our best foot forward. I couldn’t ask more of the boys as far as what they have put in with their efforts, so I am happy with them.”

Bermuda are in the same group as Greenland, Froya and Orkney in the Island Games but Nusum has been left frustrated by the lack of details on their opponents.

“We’ve been looking for information on these teams but it’s very difficult to find steady information on these teams,” he said.

“So a lot of our focus has been on the things we can control and the things that we understand and we know we can do. We do know it’s going to be a physical game against most of those teams as they’re going to have big guys, so we have to match that up and hopefully our footballing capabilities will be able to succeed where we may lack in the physical side of things.”

Nusum is pleased with the liveliness displayed by the players in their training sessions.

“The energy is good, they are kind of attacking each other in the sense of wanting to play hard and wanting everybody else to play hard,” he said.

“There is a good chemistry among the rest of the boys. A lot of them know each other from the younger days, so they have already built a bond with each other.”

Nusum reckons that assigning leadership responsibilities to three players is his way of preparing them for the senior team.

“We have a group of three that we call the leaders of the entire group,’’ the coach stated.

“My goal is make sure that our players have the qualities to lead. Some of them do and some of them don’t, so that’s what we building. A lot of things are building for these guys to then hopefully get into the senior team, that’s the whole point of this and the qualities that most coaches will look for in some of the players.”

The squad of 20 has a couple of players at university in the United States and some plying their trade in Britain. Duke University’s Jai Bean, Ne-Jai Tucker, who is with Burnley academy, and Harry Twite, who made his Bermuda senior team debut in a Concacaf Nations League clash against Guyana this year, are the most high-profile members of the team.

Bermuda play their matches in three consecutive days from July 9 to 11. Their first opponents are Froya, with Orkney next before they finish the group campaign against Greenland.