Sunderland pair free to face Hammers
by Toby Davis, 26 March 2008
Sunderland duo Carlos Edwards and Kenwyne Jones will be available to face West Ham at the weekend after the Trinidad and Tobago Federation decided against taking action to prevent them playing.
Boss Roy Keane refused to release the pair for T&T’s international friendly against Jamaica on fitness grounds despite their national team asking to independently verify their conditions.
Under Fifa rules, international federations can prevent players from playing for their clubs for five days after refusing an international call-up.
But T&T have decided against imposing the sanction, after a last-minute intervention from Dwight Yorke.
Yorke, the Caribbean side's captain at the last World Cup, persuaded the federation's vice president, Jack Warner, to let them play.
"We are putting all that behind us," Warner told a press conference, reported in the Trinidad & Tobago Express.
"We won't invoke the Fifa regulation."