Giving Jack his jacket.
By: Raffique Shah (Express).
I must confess that I was pleasantly, no, ecstatically, surprised when the Stern John/Dennis Lawrence combination put Trinidad and Tobago into the 2006 World Cup finals. In fact, as soon as that goal was headed beautifully into the net, I switched off mentally, moved away from the television set, saying: "We win!"
What I did not say to other members of the family who were also looking at the game was I did not have the "belly" to sit out the remainder of the game to see Bahrain come back from behind. I didn't think they could, given their track record. But in sports, one knows anything can happen in a split-second to change fortunes.
When it comes to sports at the national and international levels, I am not just a fan of anything or anyone Trinbagonian, but almost a fanatic, especially in the disciplines of cricket, football and athletics. Oh, I don't attend matches, be they at the Oval or the stadium, not since television has brought sports into the comfort of our homes, replays, et al.
But my heart is with every national player or team: I don't need to wear red, drape myself with the national flag, run about the streets like a madman in order to show my bona fides. In fact, on the very night that the Soca Warriors did us proud in Bahrain, I later found my soul badly wounded when I decided to follow the West Indies team playing in the second Test against Australia. After Smith, Sarwan and Lara were dismissed, and with Gayle back in the dressing room ill, I lost all hope. By the following morning when I heard the scores, I resigned myself to facing another bout of humiliation at the hands of Australia.
But back to our national football team. Early on, when the campaign had just begun, I saw some performances that were less than impressive-and that's putting it mildly. In my mind, I compared this team with its forerunner in 1973, and even the "Strike Squad" of 1989.
It did not quite measure up, especially in the absence of our two star players, Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy. Surely, if only for their experience, they were needed to help us get past all the other Caribbean teams, and to seriously tackle the more experienced Central American ones, some of whom had made it to the World Cup before. Game after game, even as we scraped through, I became less confident. Even the victory against a depleted Mexico did not lift my spirits.
What I learned in this pock-marked road to Germany was that I was no good at interpreting football, assessing players. Not because I never played the game (except for "small goal" and some "street football"), but because I never studied it as carefully as, say, I have done with athletics. I did, however, talk with people who knew better. When Lincoln "Tiger" Phillips returned home to serve (I had long questioned why this ace goalkeeper was never brought back, not just for his skills, but for his ability to lead, to relate with young players), I asked him pointedly: Can we make it to Germany? He answered in the affirmative, but he did outline some conditions we needed to meet in order to get there. Ken Butcher, too, told me as much.
However, I had grown so accustomed to disappointments in sports, I remained sceptical. Even after that first match against Bahrain, clearly a team with inferior players but equal in determination to get to Germany, I was... well, scared. In fact, I felt if we did not put two or three goals into the net by half-time in the crucial return match, we could forget it. How wrong I was. And how happy I am that I was wrong! Because what I saw in those young players in the early minutes of the second half was nothing short of a fighting spirit that I associate with the military.
The man I want to single out, though, for his tenacity, his confidence in the team, his dogged fighting spirit that saw him pitted against Government, Cabinet and corporate T&T, is Jack Warner. Although we attended the same college, Jack and I have been at odds on many issues, not the least of which was his misplaced confidence in Basdeo Panday. Even in football, I have publicly disagreed with him for hiring and firing players and officials "by vaps".
It is clear now, though, that had it not been for Jack's determination, his style of leading from the front and devil-take-the-hindmost attitude, we might never have seen the glory of a place in the World Cup finals. Sure, the coach, technical staff and players, made it happen. But Jack's obsession with making a seemingly impossible dream turn into reality was probably the most critical element in this nerve-racking exercise. He deserves all credit for T&T's history-making entry into the stratosphere of international football.
A nation of Soca Warriors.
Fr Clyde Harvey (Express).
Congratulations to Team TnT! Congratulations, Soca Warriors! Thanks to Jack Warner and Coach Beenhakker for their unswerving commitment to bringing us where we are! I join the people of Trinidad and Tobago in saluting your success thus far on the road to Germany! The nation is at your feet, on the road to Germany.
On Thursday morning as I prepared for Morning Prayer and Mass, I was struck by the reading of the day, read that day in Catholic churches throughout the world. It was from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, vv 41-44.
Did we recognise the opportunity that God was offering us at this moment? Where will the road to Germany and beyond actually lead us as a nation and as individuals?
Already we are talking about honours and rewards. We forget what a crisis early adulation created for Brian Lara.
One temptation of the next six months will be to do everything necessary to get as many people as possible to Germany to support the team. At home, we will seek to give the team everything they need. People will want to meet them whenever possible, to affirm and encourage them in all kinds of ways. Companies will not miss the advertisement opportunities, the presence (use?) of the team being one of the conditions for sponsorship. Indeed, some are already plotting about how best and easiest to make millions out of this golden opportunity.
What must happen? International football for the player is about skill, discipline and focused hard work. If we are not to become an angry and disappointed nation, the Soca Warriors must become the hardest working group of skilled and disciplined men in the nation. In other words, for them fete must done, except as an occasional outlet for steam.
Was that the message we sent them on Thursday? Or were we saying to them, "No matter how tired you may be, we want a piece of you and we will have it." How many of those players felt real resentment and anger for what they were being put through on Thursday? Only their families will know how they really felt about that.
Support for Team TnT should mean that we all become a nation of Soca Warriors. For the team, to be a Soca Warrior must mean to be a person of skill, discipline and hard work, with that capacity to laugh at oneself which is a mark of a true Trini.
Who will devise a programme for the nation over the next six months which will ask every man and woman to become a person of skill (whatever your skill may be), discipline and hard work? Who will think out of the current box of money and fete and seize this once in a lifetime opportunity to really turn this country around? Who will look beyond political mileage and rise to the non-partisan requirements of the moment? What images will the media offer us? Will we demand certain standards of those who proudly were a jersey proclaiming "I am a Soca Warrior!"? Right now as I type the words, it is the jump-up tune that echoes in my head. Can that be tied to something more and made to work for the upliftment of the country?
Much has been said about this victory affecting crime in the country. What will be the headlines next Thursday? Will we be back to crime again? Remember Jamaica! Jamaica went to the World Cup.
The Reggae Boys won the hearts of many with the level of their football and their rhythms. Hopefully we will do the same or better. Then what? Jamaica came home. The murder rate went past the 1000 mark and some of those same Reggae Boys are back in Kingston's ghettos. Little changed.
Now is the time to invest the term Soca Warrior with a whole new and deeper meaning, especially for the young men of our nation. It is a wonderfully masculine term. Let us aim to gather 100,000 Soca Warriors in the National Stadium in May 2006-all of them having lived lives of honed skill, discipline and hard work over the previous months. Let every school and firm in the country use these values and virtues to choose its own representative Soca Warrior for a national pre-Germany Festival of Excellence.
We should not be thinking about National Awards now. Whatever happens in Germany, Jack Warner should get a Trinity Cross or its equivalent for his achievement with football and his now legendary personal generosity to worthy causes. But not now! By the time June comes, if we use this opportunity, we will discover other people worthy of awards who will have helped to win for this country a victory which, win or lose in Germany, can usher in a Day of Peace for Trinidad and Tobago. Will we recognise the opportunity which God offers us?
