Making mas with mediocrity.
By: Fazeer Mohammed (Express).[/size]
So now we have to endure five more months, at least, of this rum-and-roti football politicking.
How is it possible to make any meaningful progress towards a culture of sporting excellence when we keep celebrating mediocrity to fulfil short-term, short-sighted objectives?
There have been some classics over the years, but Monday night's "welcome home" charade for the senior national football team up at the airport plumbed new depths of shameless political expediency.
If the players were uncomfortable and embarrassed by it all, they had every right to be.
In shovelling the manure about a "magnificent" and "wonderful" performance by Aurtis Whitley's side, Sports Minister Gary Hunt merely confirmed what we all knew to be the real purpose of this wasteful exercise (by the way, how much did it cost?).
This had nothing to do with substance or encouragement on the basis of a realistic assessment of the situation, but was all about pandering to the cameras and microphones - and therefore the national electorate - and playing patriotic by heralding a team that would probably have preferred to shuffle quietly away.
Don't get me wrong. They didn't ultimately shame us, because the goals by Darryl Roberts and Stern John on Sunday night in Hamilton were just enough to overturn the humiliation of a week earlier in Macoya. But they didn't do themselves justice, they didn't play anywhere close to the level we know they can, and they should therefore not be hailed as conquering heroes for scraping past opponents they should be thrashing.
Amid the relief that we haven't fallen flat at the first hurdle in the campaign to get to South Africa 2010, some of us are trying to fool ourselves with the notion that the 2-0 win in the return fixture against Bermuda was a herculean effort and worthy of the highest praise.
Just in case we're losing perspective on this whole thing, the Bermudans are ranked 139th in the world and have never made it past the first round of World Cup qualifying. Indeed, they were whipped 3-0 by Barbados a week before the first leg at the Marvin Lee Stadium, a Bajan team that then travelled to California and collected eight goals without reply from the United States in the first leg of their qualifier.
On the other side of the ball you have Trinidad and Tobago, not exactly football heavyweights at 87th in the FIFA ratings (behind Iceland and Zimbabwe but ahead of New Zealand and Guatemala, at least for now), but a Caribbean force to reckon with. Champions in the region many times over and, to top it all off, an historic first World Cup finals appearance in Germany two years ago where we were far from disgraced, holding Sweden to a goalless draw and frustrating England for 84 minutes before succumbing at the end.
Even without all the foreign-based professionals, this country should not be scrambling to overcome Bermuda, unless we are prepared to concede Wim Rijsbergen's assertion that the T&T Pro League is really not producing the calibre of player capable of competing on the international stage.
So what are we celebrating? What are we hailing?
It is like your child managing a bare pass in the end-of-term exams when you know he or she consistently averages higher and has really seriously underperformed. No right-thinking parent could ever be satisfied with such an underachiever, and while it can be damaging to get down too much on the student, you wouldn't expect a celebratory party to be thrown either.
But we're not dealing with right-thinking parents here, because the right-thinking politician will believe that making a drink-up dancehall fete out of every occasion is the way to go because the masses fall for it every single time.
If it's not some entertainer sounding more Jamaican than Jamaicans in bigging up our Olympic hopefuls on the Brian Lara Promenade, it's giving a national team an "appropriate welcome" for playing sub-standard football.
It takes at least two politicians to sustain proper bacchanal, and with Jack Warner leading the strike force from the other side, you know there will be no shortage of claims, counter-claims and inflammatory rhetoric before, during and after our last CONCACAF semi-final qualifier at home to Cuba on November 19.
If you think you've had enough of those celebrated "yesterday was yesterday, today is today" moments, well, brother man, that was just the beginning.
Will Jack follow through on the outlandish threat to play our designated home games outside of Trinidad and Tobago? Will Hunt's ministry request 200 tickets for the September 6 clash with Guatemala that kicks off the next phase of World Cup qualifying? Tune in next time and find out.
This is really readymade headline material. You just have to kick back, make sure the recorders are on with plenty of storage space and watch the low-budget, petty island drama unfold. The Reef, Westwood Park and Calabash Alley will have nothing on Hunt vs Warner: The Series.
It is difficult to see how our footballers will not be affected by the continuing public fiasco over a campaign that brought such joy and unity on the previous occasion. I suppose the best advice to give them is to work on their own game, which needs considerable improvement on the evidence of the Bermuda fixtures, and try not to be distracted by the games off the field.
There's plenty more rum-and-roti grandstanding to come, but Whitley and company should only have an appetite for the very tough contests that lie ahead.
