Vibezin with Clayton Morris
Interview by palos, Transcription by Tallman
Friday January 21, 2005 at 3 AM (after practicing with Phase II Pan Groove prior to the National Panorama semi-finals)
Clayton “JB” Morris was the captain of the infamous Strike Squad football team who came within one point of qualifying for the 1990 World Cup.
palos: So Clayton, welcome to socawarriors.net
JB: It’s a pleasure to be on the socawarriors.net website.
palos: Clayton, basically what I want to do is get an idea of who you are. You are the person who was the captain of arguably the most famous and most beloved football team that has ever come out of Trinidad & Tobago, the Strike Squad. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in football and how you got to the national level.
JB: I started football in St. Anns. I was born and I grew up in St. Anns. I came from a large family, a football team to be exact. There were 11 of us, 7 boys and 4 girls, 3 elder brothers and 3 younger brothers. I grew up seeing my elder brothers playing football right in the mental hospital and I didn’t have a choice but to follow them. I followed them playing football and pan because my dad was also a pan tuner. I think they go hand in hand because of the rhythm, timing and coordination. If you look at pan, we play pan without reading music. A lot of us don’t understand, don’t read music. I can’t read music, but you have to remember all the notes to play. So I think that [pan] helped me be the player I turned out to be, the football player with the knowledge of playing the pan, the skill, the art.
palos: Well, I must be the exception to the rule, because I can play pan, but I cannot play football at all.
JB: Well. I guess if you had role models to look at in your youth days you wouldn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice and I’m really happy that I took that step and it really helped me throughout my life even up to this day.
palos: Were you always a defender?
JB: Yes, I always liked to look from behind. If you notice, I play pan from up in the rhythm section, from behind. I always like to, you know, I want to clean up.
palos: So your glory is not necessarily to put the ball in the net?
JB: No, it is to prevent the ball from getting in the net.
palos: Being from St. Anns, you obviously must have played for Rangers. Tell me a little bit about them.
JB: Watching my elder brothers, they were members of the Rangers team and when they were playing we did not have anything like an U-13 or any youth leagues, so we decided to join the Mervina League in the Queens Park Savannah. We started there with an U-13 Rangers team. We had U-13, U-15 and U-17 teams and I was the captain at all those levels. I think I was 16 when I first played senior football with Soul City, well, they were just Cascade. At the time I played for them, I was still captaining Rangers. I left Rangers in 1982 and went on to play with ECM Motown. It was really a hard decision for me to leave Rangers, but I got some advice from a guy from Cascade, Cupid, I can’t remember his first name. He was affiliated with Carib Peterborough at the time and he wanted me to play for them. He kept telling me “Clayton, the amount of talent you have, if you stay here you wouldn’t grow.” He said “you need to go out.” I took his advice and I decided to go out. I went to play with ECM Motown and the next year I was drafted into ASL. It was a pleasure for me and a real honour when Jan Zwartkruis, who was a coach from Holland and also the national team coach at that time told me that with my qualities, he believed that I could do a better job than Stuart Charles who was considered to be the best sweeper in Trinidad at that time. The reason for him not making the national team was because he was St. Lucian. That was really a boost for me because I used to sit and watch Stuart Charles play. Before him, I used to watch Carlyle Andrews, from Belmont, out of the Army and then when Stuart Charles came on the scene I used to look at all his moves. When he told me that I could do a better job, it made me nervous at the time, but then I said if a coach, a foreign coach, a coach from Holland could come and tell me that he sees that quality in me, I took it as an incentive and I went on to replace Stuart Charles. He went to the midfield and I played as a sweeper.
palos: Is it at that point that you made your debut for Trinidad & Tobago?
JB: No, because I played with the U-19 team, but yes, it is at that time that I made my debut for the senior team. We went to Bermuda on Boxing Day in 1982 and stayed there for two weeks.
palos: What was it like, the first game?
JB: When I went on the tour, deceased Roderick Warner was the coach and for the first game I sat in the stands and watched the game. We lost the game; I think it was 2-0 against Bermuda’s national team. The second game was against one of the top Bermudan clubs, Somerset. Roderick Warner came to me and said that I would be starting in the next game. That was another nerve wracking experience for me, but then again, I told myself that I’m the type of person who never backs down from a challenge. Every time someone tells me that I can do something, I always go at it because I believe they see something in me. So when Roderick told me that, I didn’t sleep that night, but thank God I had Anthony Barrington and Brian John, who were my roommates. Brian realized that I was having some problems dealing with the whole thing, so we talked about it. You wouldn’t believe it, but the first ball I touched in that game resulted in a goal. Michael Maurice played the ball on top of the 18 yard box for me. Due to my inexperience, instead of going into the 18 yard box and touching the ball so the referee could replay it, I waited for the ball to come out. As the ball came out, I touched it and a Bermudan player took it away and went straight to goal. I can’t remember the player’s name, but he used to play in England. After that, Brian John came to me and said “JB, let’s go”, and I ended up getting man-of-the-match in that game. We came back and won the game 3-1. That really gave me the incentive to carry on because I realized that I made a mistake, but then I came back and got man-of-the-match in that game. From then, I represented the country for 10 years straight.
palos: Now tell me about the Strike Squad and working with Gally Cummings. I personally remember the game against Honduras in Honduras when we tied them and went through to the final round of qualifying.
JB: That was a 1-1 draw.
palos: I think Nakhid came on as a sub.
JB: No, Nakhid didn’t come on, he was on the bench but he didn’t come on.
palos: Chinapoo was also on the squad. The Strike Squad then hardly resembled the Strike Squad that came to be.
JB: We weren’t called the Strike Squad then. The following year, when we got through to the last rounds, deceased Lancelot Layne was the one who dubbed us the Strike Squad when he made the calypso. But the Strike Squad, if you want to put it that way, came about 2 years before. It didn’t just happen overnight. Most of the players were playing from 1987. We were together from 1987 with deceased Roderick Warner. At the end of 1987 is when Gally and them came and started to mould the team. With Gally’s experience from playing professional football, he was able to instill a kind of professionalism within the team, the whole organization, the way we’re supposed to train, the weight training. Those are things that we didn’t have before. That really brought about the camaraderie and the team spirit we had. The players individually had passion; we all used to compete with each other. I remember one training session, we were doing a Cooper test and everybody was fighting to beat the clock. Earl Carter started and he set the pace. We ran in two groups. I led the next group and when I finished, I made more than Spiderman and I dropped down. I was out of it. That is the kind of determination we had competing with each other and we could see the fruits that came out of the hard work and dedication.
palos: What were your favorite moments playing with the Strike Squad? What were your most memorable moments?
JB: Well, there are two I could talk about. One is that same game you mentioned in Honduras when we drew 0-0. Here it is, we came up against a country that played in a World Cup before and in their own yard we were able to dethrone them and take their place, at least look for a berth in the World Cup. It’s the first time I cried. You know, you cry for sorrow and you cry and you cry and then when you feel satisfied you stop crying, but crying for joy, is something where you can’t hold back those tears. That is something I will always remember. After that game, we all got to the dressing room and everybody was just crying. We just couldn’t stop. The second memorable moment happened the following year. It was the last game of the campaign, the game against America in 1989. Here it was, a dream that you live for, it came and it just went out the door.
palos: Just thinking about that, it’s a traumatic memory. A lot has been said. In retrospect, we should not have camped in Forest Reserve, the players were tired. Is that something you would say is a fair comment?
JB: You see, the thing about it is you put on your sneakers or your underwear using a certain routine because it works. If you are accustomed putting your right foot first and you try putting your left foot first, you will stumble. When we started the 1989 campaign we were based opposite the President’s Ground at Alicia’s Guest House. We had problems with players getting sufficient rest because people were constantly visiting since we were right there in Port-of-Spain. We decided that we wanted to be in a place where we could really feel secure and be away from the focus. It so happened that we ended up in Forest Reserve after the first game against Costa Rica. For all of our games we came from there and we kept the routine and things we working for us. We had a training session on Fatima Ground. We started on the whole field and by the time the session finished we were all in a little circle. It was crowded, crowd, you could barely do anything. It took us maybe two hours before we could come off the field to get on the bus. We realized that we had no security; we were trying to show the people that we have 90 minutes before Italy, but like nobody understood that. We went back to Forest, we sat and talked, looking at all avenues, how we could get out of this situation, winning this game or getting the result we want and how we would come out of the Stadium. We realized that every time we appeared in public, nobody would help us. We would have to reach over by the bar [points to the bar in the panyard] over there and it would take us two hours. There was no security and we were having real problems with that. Gally and I sat and talked; I say “Coach, the best thing to do is to stick to our routine.” We can look back and say that it was a bad decision, but I think the people didn’t understand exactly what we were getting into. I think the occasion was too big for us. On November 19, 1989 we came out of the camp in Forest and it was Carnival in Fyzabad. People blocked the bus. They knew what time we had to reach the Stadium, but they still blocked the bus. We went to our regular church…and I have two pictures, one when we were alone in the church and one when the crowd was in the church. On that day, things just couldn’t flow, didn’t flow. Looking at it now, you say we should not have traveled from there, but I think at that time we blessed a lot of people hearts. I didn’t know that coming down that highway had so many people living in the bush. They all came out. Everything was red. A lot of poor people who were squatting came out and they really felt part of the country.
palos: That was a special, special, special time in this country. I think… I can’t really speak for anyone else but I felt as though we really didn’t know how to handle it.
JB: The occasion was too big for us. As I said, we used that trend because we felt that it was working for us. When we reached the Stadium there were problems. People who had tickets, genuine tickets, couldn’t get in. They decided to let the players know that they were supporting the team at all of the games and now they have their tickets but can’t get in and the people who were inside were Johnny-come-lately. We had to bear the brunt of that because we came off the bus with our bags to go in the Stadium but we had to leave them. There was an honour guard of soldiers to escort us in and they couldn’t help us. We had to put down our bags and fight our way through the crowd and wait on the soldiers to bring our bags. Again, security was really lax. But as I said before, we followed that trend because it worked for us in the past.
palos: Now let us fast forward to one of the big things in football. You’re a coach now and one of the big problems in international football is the whole issue of club versus country. We don’t know what the solution is, because in my view, if you have a national coach and you’re only getting your players a maximum of 5 days before a game, what exactly can you do to build the kind of cohesiveness that the Strike Squad had? The Strike Squad didn’t have a club versus country issue. Everybody was able to train together 24x7. Do you have any ideas as to what can be done to work within that limitation?
JB: That is a really ticklish situation. I had the experience because I was the assistant coach to Porterfield in the last campaign and that is something we had to deal with. We dealt with it by training the local players who we had available. We worked with them and we made sure that we set up a structure; the players knew what we were about. We knew the system we were playing and we worked with them knowing that the foreign-based players would be coming 5 days before the game. We would use the local players and see who was doing the job that was required. If we felt we need the foreign-based, we would say OK, we need Stern, we need this player in the forward position, we need this person in the midfield and we would bring them in to fit into those positions and not necessarily to bring them and put them on the bench. As a result, we weren’t really having that problem because we had a structure. If you just say they playing outside and we bringing all of them, then I think you would have a problem to get them coordinated with the team. Yes, you need your players to train with you as much as they can but then we have to understand that the clubs are those guys’ bread and butter, that is what they live by, so we have to work around it and deal with them according to when they get released. Football is a team sport and you must be able to have a team that they could fit into. You should not bring all of them back because if you look at it, most of them are not really playing regularly and some of the times they are not match fit. They may be physically fit, but you need to have match fitness and they are out there and most of them are playing only 10-15 minutes a game and then you bring them here to play an international game of 90 minutes. You end up putting them under pressure, but then again you have to work with what you have here. Some people may say that the locally-based players are no good, but I think that it is not a good thing to say. They are national players, you work with them, let them understand the system, and bring the foreign players to fit with them. We have to get around that, because we can’t continue to say that foreign players coming in too late and all that sort of thing. Bring them to fit into a spot. I saw something on yesterday’s papers that said they were bringing in Shaka and Clayton Ince. I think that somewhere along the line there you are wasting money. You are bringing one to put on the bench. You have to bring him here, pay his airfare and yet he has to sit on the bench. If we are looking at development then let somebody locally be the understudy.
palos: I guess that the idea is, if your number one gets injured in a match…but I understand where you are coming from.
JB: But where is the development? Where is the development? If we are thinking development and people…
palos: Development is Digicel … [laughs]. Now, final question. Who is the best player you have played with?
JB: Russell Latapy.
palos: No hesitation! You heard it here first. That is my player you know.
JB: No hesitation, Russell Latapy. You can’t get another like that just so.
palos: Well Clayton, on behalf of socawarriors.net and all the forum members, we really appreciate your time. You were the leader both physically and spiritually for that team and by extension all of us and we really appreciate the job that you did. Even though we didn’t go to the World Cup in 1989, the Strike Squad will forever be in the heart and minds of the people of Trinidad & Tobago. You will go down in history and that is something that could never ever be forgotten and ever be taken for granted. We really appreciate everything that you’ve done.
JB: I’m really glad to hear that. I would like to let you all know that the Strike Squad reunited in 2000. We opened the Borough Day festivities in Point Fortin and our main objective right now is to help eradicate crime in this country by going into communities, doing clinics with the kids and playing representative teams in the respective communities . We even go into the prisons and play games against the inmates. The level of play and experience we show as a group has really blessed the people who we come up against as well as the people who have seen us play. So the Strike Squad dream is still on. Most of us are coaches now and we thank God that we still have the energy to play. We are not just a team going around playing fete matches; we go into communities, opening and closing domestic leagues and that sort of thing. So I would like to let you all know that we are still around. Just two years ago we played in a 7-a-side tournament in Tobago. We went in the open tournament with Caribbean teams, St. Vincent, Grenada, what have you and we won that tournament and I was voted MVP. We started that tournament as “old men” and by the end, they called us teachers. So I would like to let you know that the Strike Squad dream is still on.
palos: One more thing before we go. One question that came up on our website was who would win a match between the Strike Squad and the current team? So Clayton, I’m putting that question to you. Who will win that game? Remember, it’s 90 minutes.
JB: The Strike Squad.
palos: The Strike Squad winning a 90 minutes game.
JB: Football is a team sport.
palos: They wouldn’t run you off the park?
JB: Football is a team sport. Once they give us a date for that game we would put some gas in our tank. We have the experience, we have the knowledge. Most of us are coaching and we know what it takes to implement the technical and tactical aspects of the game. We have the physical capabilities to do it, and I think from what we have done since we’ve reunited, give us a little time and we could prepare for that game.
palos: Well ladies and gentlemen, you heard it first, the gauntlet has been thrown down. The Strike Squad says that they will win. The captain says that they would beat the current team. I’m looking forward to that game. Clayton, on behalf of socawarriors.net, thanks again.
JB: It’s a pleasure Gary. It’s also a pleasure playing pan with you in Phase II. Respect.
