Fatima can exorcise my demons
By Anil Roberts (Trinidad Guardian)
Eighteen years is certainly a long time to wait. However it appears that finally my alma mater, Fatima College is well placed to make a run at a national title or titles this season.
It was a full 18 years ago that my team-mates and I learned the harshest of lessons, that overconfidence breeds failure.
As a unit we simply threw away the national Big Seven League title because individually we believed that we had it won. Only the formality of beating St. Mary’s College for the third straight time in one season stood in our way. CIC was floundering at the bottom of the big seven table which included, Signal Hill, Presentation College (San Fernando), St. Benedict, Malick, San Juan, CIC and us Fatima College.
We were by no stretch of the imagination the most talented team in the country, however we played with pride and commitment because we truly loved one another as indeed we loved our school.
We had grown up together, limed together, gotten into trouble together, studied together, tracked girls together, played football together from form one, to under 14 into under 16 and onto the first eleven squad. In short we were all brothers.
We were united under one leader, our captain Sean Ramdoo. He was a quiet leader who led by example. His obvious footballing pedigree was equally matched by his supreme fitness and total commitment to the cause. He was also the most experienced player, along with Scott Rodriguez who had played first 11 football since form three. One year earlier, while I was completing my A Levels at Millfield School in England, Scott had made the decision to transform himself from being one of the best goalkeepers in the Colleges League to a deadly, though temperamental striker. His left foot bullets still reverberate in the minds of opposing keepers to this day. Scotty was big, fast, powerful and most importantly hungry to score goals.
Our mercurical coach, Colin Murray, who understood the absolute importance of team chemistry in producing a winning formula, immediately decided to play me, up front with Scotty, knowing full well that we holds true to this day, as Scotty is the Godfather of my first born daughter, Rebecca.
Scott and I had an understanding of each other’s abilities, preferences, strengths and weaknesses that can only be described as instinctive. I knew what Scotty was going to do, well before he actually did it and vice versa.
However, the anchor of our team was the improved play of our goalkeeper Christopher Sagar. He had an MVP year in goal, pulling off some of the most remarkable saves I have every seen.
He was ably supported in defense by the “Black Mamba” Miguel Buruett, a tall sleek sweeper who combined patience with controlled aggression, speed and intelligence. Keith Farinha, completed the center of defense with his uncanny ability to take quality strikers totally out of the game. Our wingbacks were definitely the weak point of our team, however this weakness was kept to a minimum by some astute personnel and systematic changes implemented by Murray.
He simply demanded that the two wide midfielders provide coverage for our wingbacks at all times while never shirking their attacking responsibility.
This meant an increased workload for both Ramdoo and Dwight Findlay. The central midfield position was controlled by Lawson Bernard, a silky, smooth, skillful player with the ability to pass with both feet, who very rarely got caught out of position.
The other, auxillory central midfield position was shared between the young, Keston Wright and the “Noble Ostrich” Raymond Clarke.
In 1987, we were able to win the North Zone with three games to spare. The ‘Big Seven’ however would present us with a host of new challenges. Signal Hill boasted the likes of Dwight Yorke and Colvin Hutchinson, Presentation College had Anthony Sherwood, Romano Paul and Mr. Osbourne, St. Benedicts fielded Ivan Sampson, San Juan placed most of their attacking burden on Louis Le Gendre, while CIC, had, in Kona Hislop arguably, the most deadly forward to ever play colleges league football. Kona Hislop always came directly down the opponents’ throats, he was not interested in side to side dribbling. His acceleration over the first five yards was simply lethal. Kona Hislop had the ability to win a game on his own.
This is a fact that somehow managed to slip all of our collective minds ahead of our sixth and final game in the 1987 Big Seven Competition. All we needed was a draw to win the national league title. We had beaten Malick and St. Benedicts, lost to San Juan in the Oval, when I was guilty of missing at least three sitters. We miraculously scraped a 1 – nil victory over Presentation College in Skinner’s Park, despite Anthony Sherwood and the boys running roughshod over us for 88 minutes before, I headed, in a right –sided Scott Rodriguez corner to steal victory on the worst surface we had played on all season.
The pitch had not been rolled following a double-header in the rain the day before and the sun had dried the mud into forming a tapestry of deep interlocking crevasses.
Sherwood simply tore us to shreds with his ability to play the long ball in the air onto the chest of Osbourne. Sagar, our custodian saved the day. We then went on to humiliate Signal Hill at Shaw Park in Tobago. So much so, that the 3,000 odd Tobagonian fans began chanting Fatima, Fatima as we completed a 2-0 thrashing of Signal Hill.
Now all that remained was CIC, we had beaten them by 4-1 on their very own grounds and 2-1 on our field. We forgot to take into consideration the over-confidence factor. We strolled around the pitch like anointed star boys. Ninety minutes later we had been handed the most painful of losses by our most hated of rivals, who simply pounded us by 5 goals to nil. Kona Hislop scored a beaver trick, and just to put an exclamation point on our annihilation, the wingback Barry Roach scored the fifth and final goal…………… I still have nightmares about that game today. Signal Hill sent a bottle of champagne to the staff of CIC and invited them up to their celebrations. We were left holding back our tears, wondering what had just happened.
Now you can see that it has truly been a very long, painful 18 years. The 2005 version of Fatima College is collectively a more skillful unit than our 1987 team. All that is left to be seen is if they can duplicate the passion while steering clear of the inherent dangers of overconfidence, straits and complacency.
GO FATIMA!
Rallying for Rudolph.
By Garth Wattley (Express)[/size]
The grieving footballers of Malick Secondary Comprehensive got a visit from Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (T&TFF) technical director Lincoln "Tiger" Phillips at their school yesterday morning.
He was on a mission of mercy.
"When something like that happens, it affects the whole football fraternity. We must be concerned just as if it happened to us. We must have that kind of compassion," Phillips told the Express as he commented on the sudden death of Malick player Rudolph Charles last Friday during the school's BG T&T Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) Championship Division match at the Hasely Crawford stadium against Tranquillity Secondary.
Charles, who was 17 years old, collapsed and later died from what SSFL general secretary Azaad Khan said were "heart complications".
In view of Charles' death, Khan said the League have postponed Malick's North Zone fixture against Fatima College which was scheduled for this afternoon.
The SSFL have also undertaken to help with the costs of the player's funeral, which will take place on Friday at Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church in Laventille from 3 p.m.
Counselling sessions for both the players and coaching staff with psychologist Ian Jeffrey are also scheduled to start today.
In addition, a minute's silence is to be observed before the start of all of today's SSFL matches.
However, Phillips' visit to Malick yesterday was not part of the SSFL plan.
While the former national goalkeeper said he was representing the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation, he also explained his journey was "just from the heart".
The tragedy, he said, brought back to mind a personal experience.
"It was very, very personal," he said, "having gone through a similar situation in the US about 20 years ago."
Phillips explained: "I was coaching, we were going to a tournament. We had an accident and one of the parents died and one of the players was in a coma for about six months."
Phillips said the counselling he and the other parents received from a psychiatrist, who was also a parent, helped him to share with the Malick players.
"She made me talk a lot. She had an exercise with the boys and she made them talk and go over the incident. Folks have a tendency to internalise these traumas and it could mess them up for life. The exercise she put me through helped me to understand those moments. Also what she did, she spent a long time with the coaches and the parents because as adults we blame ourselves unfairly."
Phillips said yesterday at Malick, "everyone had to speak...even those who (initially) refused to talk. They did speak and cried a lot. I spoke with them as a parent and as a coach."
Charles' mother, Debra, described her son as "a loving child" and said the school as a whole had been showing concern.
"The children and them giving me a full support," she told CCN TV6. "Most of the children from the school, they always here with me since Rudolph died... They really liked him. The teachers, everybody calls me. The principal, everybody. So I can't say anything bad about the school."
Phillips said that even in their grief, the Malick boys expressed a new resolve to earn silverware this season.
"They were going to do it for him," said the T&TFF official.
"Whenever life throws anything like that at you, you can't back away but go ahead and take care of your responsibilities, both social and academic," he added.
And when Charles' mates take the field again on Saturday at the Queen's Royal College ground against QRC, Phillips has promised them to be on the sidelines, watching them try to go forward.
