Alvin Corneal

Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this would have been con­sid­ered lu­di­crous. Some would go even fur­ther and claim that it is a lack of re­spect for the pe­ri­od set aside for our cul­ture which is his­toric, en­joy­able and fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able for the trea­sury's purse.

Some may even think that the poor im­age which was at­tached to the game of foot­ball was not worth find­ing a place on the Wednes­day lead­ing up to Car­ni­val.

Nev­er­the­less, the au­thor­i­ties re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment of the game, un­der­stood ful­ly well the path they should take at this time, where our se­nior na­tion­al and U-17 na­tion­al teams have to pre­pare for im­por­tant com­pe­ti­tions and Car­ni­val should not stop the process.

Ku­dos were in or­der for pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and his mar­ket­ing ex­perts of the TTFF who sup­port­ed their tech­ni­cal de­part­ment with their plans.

Some felt that the pub­lic will not sup­port a home friend­ly, re­gard­less of which na­tion­al team was in­vit­ed. The naysay­ers did not ex­pect the vis­i­tors, many of them lo­cal, to at­tend any foot­ball game, as a pref­er­ence to Machel Mon­tano, Su­per Blue, Iw­er George and the lat­est so­ca star Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine, who were all en­gaged in mu­si­cal ac­tiv­i­ty on the same night.

I am al­so a great lover of my coun­try's ca­lyp­so and steel pan artistry, and hon­est­ly, I be­lieve that they are our great­est con­tri­bu­tion to ex­pos­ing our coun­try to the world.

How­ev­er, when Pe­ru ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to play here last Wednes­day, my first re­ac­tion was to take an overview of the de­ci­sion in or­der to be in agree­ment or not.

My foot­ball bias told me that foot­ball fans are strong­ly sup­port­ive re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances and the over­seas cit­i­zens of TT who are here for Car­ni­val may well cher­ish the op­por­tu­ni­ty to catch a glimpse of what is the state of our na­tion­al team pro­gram.

Reser­va­tion about crowd sup­port was quick­ly for­got­ten when tick­ets were sell­ing like hot bread and giv­ing the of­fi­cials the con­fi­dence that the game will have ad­e­quate num­ber of fans fill­ing the seats of the Ato Boldon sta­di­um.

Start­ing time was an­oth­er area for dis­cus­sion with the kick off time as 8.00 pm, when the ma­jor­i­ty of fetes had a sim­i­lar sched­ule.

No prob­lems, said the re­al foot­ball lovers, and the game was as en­joy­able as one could have ex­pect­ed, de­spite the fact that the lo­cal team was de­feat­ed.

Su­per­fi­cial­ly, this was the on­ly down­side to the evening, as the lo­cal team need­ed to get a vic­to­ry to con­vince the de­trac­tors that they are on the im­prove.

I dif­fer ve­he­ment­ly, if on­ly be­cause a few months ago, the team and the game took a beat­ing from al­most every di­rec­tion, while some oth­ers tried to close down the fed­er­a­tion.

Two re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tions of good per­for­mances led to qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Gold Cup fi­nals in the USA next Ju­ly, and even a de­feat against Pe­ru was a con­tin­ued form of im­prove­ment.

Did any­one re­call that Pe­ru has re­cent­ly drawn with Ar­genti­na in a World Cup qual­i­fi­er, and ac­tu­al­ly de­feat­ed Venezuela and Bo­livia with­in the last year?

Add vic­to­ry over Cos­ta Ri­ca and Pana­ma, plus two cred­itable drawn match­es against Den­mark and Tunisia, all re­sults which could tell the qual­i­ty of Pe­ru.

I would have giv­en some com­men­da­tions to the team, fol­low­ing a dis­play which in­clud­ed good ball pos­ses­sion, some five de­fense split­ting pass­es which could eas­i­ly have brought at least two goals, and the re­ten­tion of good shape in de­fence, even af­ter their at­tack­ing ploys broke down.

They were not per­fect, but against a qual­i­ty team they demon­strat­ed that with more con­sis­tent train­ing as a team and ad­di­tions in Hughton Hec­tor, Julius James and Kevin Moli­no, we could wit­ness fur­ther progress be­fore the Gold Cup.

To get opin­ions as to how the fans felt, I spoke with some of the fans on the way out, and I was im­pressed with their sup­port for what they con­sid­ered to be a for­mi­da­ble dis­play, de­spite the depth to which the game was de­scribed as de­te­ri­o­rat­ing over the past two years.

A few con­tin­ued to be crit­i­cal with com­ments which were gen­er­al as op­posed to be­ing con­struc­tive in re­la­tion to the game.

Sure­ly, they could have been dis­ap­point­ed with the missed chances, which were cre­at­ed af­ter some good build-up play, or maybe the per­cent­age of in­ac­cu­rate pass­es by our play­mak­er, add to that the de­ci­sion to sub­sti­tute play­ers when the chem­istry of mid­field co­he­sion was cre­at­ing some goal-scor­ing chances.

But when one hears com­ments about the present state of our foot­ball as a de­scrip­tion of play in this game, the com­ment is aim­less and comes from what ex­ist­ed over the past few years.

How­ev­er, they were present and had opin­ions which I re­spect­ed, re­gard­less of what I be­lieved and hoped that the stig­ma will soon be wiped away by the present lot of play­ers.

What re­al­ly both­ered me was a com­ment which was made by our for­mer cap­tain Dwight Yorke.

The for­mer Man U star was adamant about the poor state of the coun­try's foot­ball and words per­tain­ing to a per­cep­tion that every­thing went down­hill since Ger­many 2006.

Now, even if he was cor­rect, I saw his com­ment as un­fair, sim­ply be­cause Dwight has hard­ly seen foot­ball in this coun­try over the past three or four years. I do not re­call see­ing him at club match­es and al­though he was present in T&T dur­ing the pe­ri­od when Pe­ru was play­ing, I did not see him at the game in the way that I saw a num­ber of for­mer na­tion­als from home and abroad.

Re­gard­less of how much one knows about the game, no one can make an as­sess­ment if they have not wit­nessed match­es and seen the per­for­mances of play­ers over a pe­ri­od of time.

Dwight must un­der­stand the in­flu­ence he has on the pub­lic and should al­so un­der­stand the feel­ings of play­ers who are placed in the cat­e­go­ry in which his com­ments have placed them.

I hope that there is a con­tin­ued sup­port sys­tem for the na­tion­al team of this coun­try. The time for flex­ing mus­cles as part of want­i­ng fail­ure to make a point is un­pa­tri­ot­ic and sense­less in more ways than one.

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