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Offline Flex

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Humble beginnings.
« on: May 11, 2006, 02:30:51 AM »
T&T's World Cup Bow.
By: Lasana Liburd (Express).
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Left to right (back row): Eric James, Conrad Brathwaite, Andy Aleong, Jeffery Gellineau, Alvin Corneal, Ken Galt, Sir Solomon Hochoy, Cyril Austin, Sedley Joseph, Pat Small, Clem Clarke and Sonny Thompson. Front row: Tyrone de ala Bastide, Kenny Furlonge, Lincoln Phillips, Doyle Griffith and Aldwyn Ferguson.

Last November, Trinidad and Tobago created history by qualifying for their first World Cup senior tournament. The tiny twin-island republic of 1.3 million people will be the smallest nation ever to appear at a World Cup Finals when the "Soca Warriors" step on to the field in Germany next month.
Six foot seven Trinidad and Tobago defender Dennis Lawrence had the distinction of scoring the vital goal, which propelled his team into the 2006 World Cup by virtue of a 2-1 Play-Off aggregate win over Bahrain. In truth, T&T's drive towards football success began long before Lawrence or household names like Dwight Yorke, Leo Beenhakker, Bertille St Clair and Everald "Gally" Cummings.
Trinidad and Tobago's World Cup dream started with combat against Surinam on February 2, 1965 at the Queen's Park Oval, Port of Spain.
The aspirations and realities of the team, who contested the 1966 World Cup qualifiers, were very different to their counterparts, 40 years later, for more reasons than one.
In 1965, Trinidad and Tobago were entering their first official tournament and coach Conrad Braithwaite could only guess how his players would handle the challenge. Perhaps even more relevant was the fact that FIFA only allowed one team from CONCACAF to participate in the showcase tournament at the time.
In 2005, the Soca Warriors ended fourth and nine points behind joint leaders, Mexico and the United States, in a final group of six, but were able to book a place in the World Cup Finals through a Play-Off. Forty years ago, only one CONCACAF team survived the qualifying rounds and Mexico were formidable and growing stronger.
The "Ticos" participated in the inaugural World Cup tournament in 1930 and were slowly winning respect from the powerful European and South American teams. In the 1958 competition, Mexico tallied their first points at a World Cup by holding Wales and Hungary to 1-1 ties in the group stages and, in 1962, the Spanish-speaking North American country bettered this record by whipping Czechoslovakia 3-1.
Not that the 18 players in red, black and white strip were thinking of Mexico as they stretched their legs at the Queen's Park Oval on the afternoon of February 7.
In the corner of the dressing room, 23-year-old goalkeeper Lincoln Phillips was particularly distressed. Phillips, a tall, dark and slender figure with a flat top hairstyle, looked at himself in disgust, sucked his teeth and grimaced.
His eyes were locked on his scruffy light blue jersey with yellow stripes but his anger was aimed at Dutch referee Theodorus Koetsier. In international tournaments at the time, match officials were the only persons on the field allowed to wear black. Phillips never wore any other colour and he was not enjoying the change.
"When I went out, the referee (Koetsier) said I had to change my (black) jersey," said Phillips. "So someone handed me a light blue shirt instead. It was scruffy and a size too small and even had a hole in it. It affected me in no mean way.
"I hated it. I was very particular about my dress."
Phillips' affinity with black can be traced to his most vivid childhood memory at a football match. He was a 10-year-old when he first laid eyes on Maple goalkeeper Hugh Sealy and was immediately spellbound by the custodian dressed completely in black.
"They called (Sealy) 'The Black Panther'," said Phillips. "I remember standing behind the goal and seeing him move around the posts, before the game started, as though he was in a trance. He went into his goal area and started to shake the net as though he was a wild animal.
"I was very impressed."
Phillips, who went on to Queen's Royal College (QRC), spent his adolescent years attempting to emulate Sealy and even took on the nickname 'Black Panther'. A promising goalkeeper himself, Phillips represented QRC and Maple and had just joined the Army when he was selected for his first national tour in 1963. Although T&T had not participated in an official tournament, tours to various Caribbean islands or to Guyana or Surinam were commonplace.
In 1963, Phillips travelled to Suriname as replacement for retired Malvern goalkeeper Clive "Milo Man" Burnett who was understudy to Casuals' custodian Pat Gomez.
"Pat was the team captain and white, which meant something special in those days," said Phillips. "Burnett had been on the bench for Pat for the last five years and had just gotten fed up so I got my chance. Pat was a good goalkeeper but he was in really bad form on that tour."
Phillips took over after the pleadings of his teammates and, by 1965, was the established number one goalkeeper.
Cocky, athletic and flamboyant, Phillips felt he could defy any striker. But, at 23, he had no answer to a strict Dutch official and T&T were struggling to hold on against a solid Surinam squad when Braithwaite cornered his wound-up goalkeeper in the Oval's dressing room.
Phillips' performance in the first half was below his usual form.
"Listen to me Lincoln, you are the first, second and third best goalkeeper in the whole Caribbean," said Braithwaite, according to Phillips' recollection, "the only thing they changed was the shirt".
Phillips returned to the field to have what he described as the game of his life. Trinidad and Tobago already got their first World Cup goal through striker Jeff Gellineau and an Andy Aleong double as well as an Alvin Corneal item wrapped up a convincing 4-1 triumph in the country's World Cup qualifying debut.
Match highlights were replayed several times at the Deluxe Cinema, Port of Spain, and one particular save from Phillips enhanced his burgeoning reputation. A Surinamer attacker had broken clear and Phillips raced off his line and flew through the air to gobble up the ball.
"But you looked like a tiger there man!" shouted one theatre patron, in reference to the yellow stripes on Phillips' shirt as well as his athleticism.
The nickname remained and so did the brighter tops with yellow stripes. Phillips, already a community hero, was transformed from the second "Black Panther" to the first "Tiger".
The national camp was abuzz with optimism.
"We felt really good after the game," said Phillips. "We played well and our expectations were very high. We felt we had a very strong team.
"Our wingers (Corneal and Aleong) were quite good and Gellineau was absolutely brilliant with his head in the air. So our strategy was to get the ball across the goal in the air.
"We were also strong in the back with our captain Sedley Joseph who was a tremendous player and players like Aldwyn Ferguson, Clem Clarke, Tyrone de la Bastide and the aging but very wise Doyle Griffith."
There were just 3,272 fans at the Oval on February 7, which was a far cry from the packed grounds for domestic football at the time. The players were excited, but the general public had not yet been seduced by international football.
On February 20, Phillips and his teammates received a rude awakening to the complexities of international football when they landed in San Jose for their second group match away to Costa Rica. It was T&T's first game high above sea level.
"We were just jogging around the field to warm up," said Phillips, "and then Braithwaite stopped and was panting and asked the fellas 'is anyone, feeling, unusually tired?"
The match was a one-sided affair as T&T prayed for the final whistle while Costa Rica bombarded Phillips' goal. After just 30 minutes, Corneal offered to be substituted as the visiting team struggled with the high altitude and Costa Rica ended as comfortable 4-0 victors.
"When the game started, it was something else," said Phillips. "Alvin (Corneal) was on the field holding his eardrums as though they would explode. Everyone was hiding because no one wanted the ball. Our players were kicking the ball as high and far away as possible just to get some rest but they had balls all around the field that they kept throwing on.
"I had a good game. The fellas said that it could have been 10 or 11 (goals against us) because the game was so lopsided. We were so naïve to such conditions but that tournament moved me to another level as a goalkeeper."
Trinidad and Tobago played Costa Rica again on March 3 at the Oval. As revenge for the high altitude horrors, the local Football Association (FA) scheduled a kick-off at 1 p.m. to wilt the Central Americans under the blazing overhead sun. Phillips believed that it did offer the hosts some advantage although Costa Rica still won 1-0 and T&T were eliminated.
"They (Costa Rica) nearly died in the heat but they were a much better team than us," he said. "They sneaked in a goal with a good shot from the inside left position in the first half and just packed it in (their own half) after that."
The final fixture, away to Surinam, was just a formality and the talented strike pair of Bobby Sookram and Gerry Brown as well as centre-half Victor Gamaldo were given debuts in place of Aleong, Pat Small and Ken Furlonge--at the time, the T&TFA and not the coach selected the team. T&T lost 6-1 with Bobby Sookram bagging the lone goal.
"We felt very disappointed after the last qualifier," said Phillips. "But the expectation of going to the World Cup was never there. It was just one team (who qualified) from the region and Mexico were light years ahead of us while we had no history of playing in the World Cup." The players switched focus back to their respective clubs. But T&T had begun down the long road of international football.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2006, 04:39:09 AM by Flex »
The real measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Offline Tongue

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2006, 07:57:52 AM »
ah serious piece of football history dey.

Offline trinidad badboy

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2006, 02:29:08 PM »


nice article good for the youth on the board...

Offline Big Magician

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2006, 02:52:17 PM »
great stuff lasana.....we should collect this 11 part series....
Little Magician is King.......ask Jorge Campos


Offline big dawg

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2006, 05:09:58 PM »
nice story 4 Real
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Offline Dutty

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2006, 06:57:53 AM »
wow!! sir solomon hochoy??!!??....ah could finally put ah face to the highway

Interesting , all these names have dissapeared off the football radar and only corneal and phillips remain
I'm sure quite a few of them can offer a lot of wisdom, maybe even expertise to upcomming players
I hope that changes after this WC
Little known fact: The online transportation medium called Uber was pioneered in Trinidad & Tobago in the 1960's. It was originally called pullin bull.

Offline samo

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2006, 08:41:53 AM »
Nice.... We should really have the whole series linked to the website...

Offline E-man

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Re: Humble beginnings.
« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2009, 05:32:21 PM »
Anyone know a national player named H. Watts?

Was a member of the team that went on a tour to Guyana in 1964.

What's his full first name?

Reuters article here edit: I guess they don't let you see w/o registering anymore.

The rest of the team was:

    Aldwyn Ferguson, Andy Aleong, Arthur Brown, Charlie Mendes, Doyle Griffith, Henry Quanvie, Jean Mouttet, Kelvin Berassa, Lincoln Phillips, Richard Nieves, Ronald Gray, Sedley Joseph, Son Baptiste, Tyrone DeLaBastide, Willie Rodriguez
« Last Edit: May 28, 2009, 05:34:26 PM by E-man »

 

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