taken from the TT Guardian:
An amusing read
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Sweet talk and lasting memories
HUGH HENDERSON
Published: 12 Apr 2010
Members of the Soca Princesses, the country’s national women’s football team get lots of attention from their coaches Muhammad Shabazz and Even Pellurud. Fifty years ago, no girl could kick a ball.
Two weeks ago my longtime school friend Joe Azar organised a luncheon for some Mount St Benedict old boys to meet a popular past student Neil Woonsam, whom we had not seen for 55 years. Talk was sweet, old photos were examined, stories were plentiful and it was a beautiful experience proving once again what friends are all about. Neil was one of my best friends at school as we played on all the school teams and it was a dream fulfilled to see him again. As I drove home, our discussions caused me to reflect on how schoolboy sport had changed over the last 50 plus years.
For example:
As students at a boarding school we lived in a disciplined atmosphere where we bonded together for the entire school year and most of us played all sports—cricket, football, tennis, volleyball, ping pong and athletics. We also sang in the choir, acted in plays and belonged to the scout troop—such an active, healthy and balanced life. It was a given that every afternoon we went down to the playing field and then had to rush back up the hill to shower and get ready for hours of evening study. Today, you are lucky if a student plays one sport or even knows what a scout looks like. We had big name coaches. I was coached by Test spinner Ellis “Puss” Achong and Elias Constantine (Sir Learie’s brother and national player) in cricket; Jimmy Hill (Fulham and England footballer) and Alan Joseph (national football captain) in football, and PG Wilson, perhaps the best known athletic coach at the time.
We also found ourselves playing against established players. At 16 years, I was privileged to play against national player Carl Furlonge, and Test bowlers Charran Singh, Jaswick Taylor and Charlie Stayers of Guyana. We grew up fast, playing as 15 and 16-year-olds in the East St,George cricket league against men twice our age and not afraid to “let us have it”. We all remember a left-arm quickie named Prime who inflicted many a black and blue on our bodies. There is the famous story of Prime hitting “Michael” on his unprotected thigh four times in a row and having the umpire turn down each appeal for LBW. In the next over, by which time Michael’s leg was almost paralysed, Prime appealed again, at which point Michael informed the umpire “out or not out, I am going!”
When it came to football season, playing at the ground in St Joseph, it was no different facing the brutal tackles of huge men who could care less how young we were. Of course, we did not travel with doctors, coaches, psychologists and trainers like today but rubbed our wounds on the sidelines and faced the world as real men not pampered babies. Equipment was something else both for cricket and football! It is hard to imagine that none of us ever heard of an arm guard, a chest pad, a thigh pad, a face mask or a batting helmet. Today’s batting gloves look like boxing gloves, while ours were made of light cotton with a few rubber pimples along the top of the fingers for so-called protection. Yet we all survived with few injuries. We used to rub our precious bats with linseed oil, another “unknown” today.
The footballs of today take off like a plane no matter who kicks them. We had to deal with leaden leather balls, thick with dubbin and threatening laces ready to scar your forehead for life if you dared to head a corner. Of course if the field was wet and the ball weighed a ton, you had to have the strength of Samson and Hercules combined to kick the ball more than a few feet. Tennis racquets today are unrecognisable to what we played with, and in our day no-one except the professional Pancho Segura used a two handed backhand. No schoolboys played golf in the 50’s, now seemingly hundreds do. Today we have the Soca Princesses in every age group but 50 years ago, no girl could kick a ball. In 1965 I invited a very pretty and intelligent girl to come to the Oval to see two English teams play. She had never seen a football match and proved it when she asked: “when are they going to move those big posts that are in the way?” (the goalposts!!).
Even my precious wife, having been to school in USA, when I took her to White Hart Lane to see the great Jimmy Greaves play for Tottenham Hotspurs, floored me when she asked what “college” he played for! Perhaps the biggest change is the mode of travel. All our youth teams today seem to do nothing but fly all over the world for warm up games, trials, major tournaments et al, living in regal style. It is difficult to keep up with who is where and when. In 1955, our 14-member school team toured Guyana to play cricket, football and athletics against St Stanislaus College, and we traveled on a bauxite ship, sleeping on the open deck, the more fortunate ones having the thick, winding anchor rope as a pillow. And you know what? We thought we were the luckiest boys in the world, privileged to play in “foreign.” How many 16-year-olds can claim to have played at Bourda and faced soon to be Test fast bowler, Charlie Stayers?
The following year, another Mount team traveled to Guyana on SSMabiri, the oldest, slowest boat ever to float. Apart from most boys nearly dying from sea-sickness, the trip took nearly three days instead of the expected one. When Roger my brother woke up on the first morning and optimistically declared he could see Guyana, he soon learned that what he was actually seeing was San Fernando in the distance! It is said that the most famous over in cricket history was bowled by Holding against Boycott in 1981. Mount old boys beg to disagree as we all remember “Joe”, a nippy opening bowler, who bowled the first over in a league game against a visiting team. The first two balls were edged through the slips for four. The third ball was dropped by second slip, the fourth was again edged for four and the fifth was dropped in the gully. This was too much for “Joe” to bear, so he went back fuming to his mark, dropped on his knees, raised the ball like a chalice to the heavens and called out in pain “Lord, Lord, what to bowl?”
We were all on edge as “Joe,” divinely inspired, roared in with his final ball, only to have the batsman take a mighty swing and hit him into the bamboo for six! Beat that Mikey Holding! Thank you guys for a fantastic occasion. The food was excellent, the company even better and the memories will last forever—after all, we are now in our seventies so “forever” is not really so long!
