I was born in Ari­ma of the 1950s, a small "coun­try" town in­hab­it­ed by peo­ple who had a dis­tinct sense of self and who dubbed them­selves "gens d'Arime" - Ari­ma peo­ple - in a def­er­en­tial tip of the hat to the French pa­tois roots and tra­di­tion of many cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing my own moth­er and grand­moth­er. Gens d'Arime saw them­selves as a breed apart from oth­er peo­ple - spe­cial.

The town was a rich ta­pes­try of com­mu­ni­ties, at once sim­i­lar yet dif­fer­ent, each with its own class, re­li­gious and even eth­nic pe­cu­liar­i­ties. Nowhere was this uni­ty in di­ver­si­ty more ev­i­dent and tan­gi­ble than in Ari­ma Sa­van­nah on any af­ter­noon dur­ing the foot­ball sea­son. Foot­ball was the main ve­hi­cle and are­na for com­mu­ni­ty iden­ti­ty and com­pe­ti­tion. I first came in­to con­tact with the or­gan­ised game in the 1960s in the Sa­van­nah, home of the Ari­ma Foot­ball League, peer­ing be­tween adult legs to catch a glimpse of the match of the day.

Each com­mu­ni­ty field­ed its team, turn­ing out he­roes from their area who fought to de­fend their colours, ho­n­our and brag­ging rights. And their sup­port­ers filled the Sa­van­nah. They left their hous­es open, de­scend­ed on the Sa­van­nah to sup­port their team and re­turned to an undis­turbed home.

It was dif­fer­ent then. The pro­tag­o­nists were Cave Boys from north of the Catholic church, Hot­spurs from "over the bridge" on the east­ern bor­der, Rams­bot­tom from Ques­nel Street, Glens­dale from Mal­abar, Palace and "Safie" Tex­tile fac­to­ry from Mau­si­ca, Agents from Tumpuna Road, Creek from Vic­to­ry Street on the west­ern bor­der, not to for­get Din­gle Boys and Benefi­ca from D'abadie, and the all Ari­ma club Ful­ham, of no com­mu­ni­ty and all, pe­jo­ra­tive­ly re­ferred to as "the gov­ern­ment" by some be­cause of its or­gan­i­sa­tion, re­sources and per­ceived con­nec­tion to the town elite. My boy­hood dreams were made of this.

Un­til the 1970s, every re­gion of the coun­try had its own league; some had two - the POS Foot­ball League and the North­ern Am­a­teur Foot­ball League around the cap­i­tal city, as well as the South­ern Foot­ball League and the South­ern Am­a­teur Foot­ball League in the south. In those days, TTFA (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) had an an­nu­al in­ter-league tour­na­ment for rep­re­sen­ta­tive teams, the Hay­ward Shield, in which a Col­leges Foot­ball League team al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed. I grew up to rep­re­sent the Ari­ma Foot­ball League and gens d'Arime - one of the great ho­n­ours of my foot­ball ca­reer - as af­ter I left St Mary's Col­lege, I played with Ful­ham, be­fore I ac­cept­ed a schol­ar­ship to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty. This was the hey­day of com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go and for Gens d'Arime, it was "we" against "dem".

All dif­fer­ences and quar­rels were set aside to face "out­siders". The Na­tion­al League came in 1973. But the com­mu­ni­ty ethos re­mained alive across the coun­try in clubs like Tarou­ca Unit­ed, Mem­phis and Ari­ma Unit­ed, Cof­fee Gi­ants, Co­corite Unit­ed and Ma­yaro Unit­ed. Com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball was the root of our elite foot­ball. And we un­der­stand its role in com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and co­he­sion.

We need bet­ter not more

No league has ever been as ex­plic­it­ly po­lit­i­cal in ori­gin and in­tent as the DNA League cre­at­ed by David Nakhid, who says the league is in­tend­ed to re­vive com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball, up­lift youth, build com­mu­ni­ties and help steer young men away from crime. In the pres­ence of UNC gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters, he said at the league's launch on No­vem­ber 19, “It is aimed to keep the Cor­ri­dor to­geth­er and we’re look­ing for that civic and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment across the board. It’s a pos­i­tive com­pe­ti­tion with a cul­tur­al as­pect. This is the kind of grass­roots ini­tia­tive that TT needs. We’re bring­ing these com­mu­ni­ty names to house­hold names. Once peo­ple are con­nect­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty, they don’t com­mit crimes.”

DNA has dual premis­es, one of which is flawed. Yes, com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball does al­low a com­mu­ni­ty to co­here, but de­spite its long-stand­ing pop­u­lar ap­peal and with due re­spect to any anec­do­tal ev­i­dence, the idea that Sport is a de­ter­rent to crime and delin­quen­cy suf­fers from a dis­tinct lack of em­pir­i­cal sup­port. Cer­tain­ly, in T&T, there is a lack of re­search and hard ev­i­dence on the ef­fec­tive­ness of sport in­ter­ven­tions in mit­i­gat­ing ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy in at-risk ado­les­cents, even if such in­ter­ven­tions do fa­cil­i­tate a mea­sure of com­mu­ni­ty co­he­sion.

Some in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies con­clude there is no over­all sig­nif­i­cant re­la­tion­ship be­tween sports par­tic­i­pa­tion and ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy, con­clud­ing that ado­les­cent ath­letes are nei­ther more nor less delin­quent than non-ath­letes. In­deed, there is even con­tro­ver­sy on whether sports par­tic­i­pa­tion is a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence or a risk fac­tor for the de­vel­op­ment of ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy.

Still, one does not have to like Nakhid or be a UNC sup­port­er to ap­pre­ci­ate the DNA idea. Life skills de­vel­oped through par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports pro­grammes can pro­vide a lay­er of pro­tec­tion for our youth, at risk or not, as they tra­verse this vale of tears. More­over, Sport con­tributes to com­mu­ni­ty iden­ti­ty and co­he­sion by fos­ter­ing uni­ty among res­i­dents. When in­di­vid­u­als come to­geth­er to sup­port their team, they form bonds with fel­low sup­port­ers. Their shared ex­pe­ri­ences cre­ate a sense of be­long­ing and sol­i­dar­i­ty, tran­scend­ing age, race and class frac­ture lines. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in and sup­port of sport is the work of na­tion­al sal­va­tion.

We do not need more foot­ball. We need bet­ter or­gan­ised and bet­ter qual­i­ty foot­ball. DNA is grass­roots foot­ball, the base of foot­ball's tri­an­gle, the apex of which is the elite game. But "grass­roots" is not a syn­onym for lack of stan­dards and qual­i­ty. The league kicks off on De­cem­ber 6 with 48 teams and prize mon­ey amount­ing to a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars, along with the promise of an All-Star team be­ing sent on a "de­vel­op­ment tour" to Spain, giv­ing young play­ers ex­po­sure and in­ter­na­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties (and this must mean teenagers be­cause no for­eign club would be in­ter­est­ed in an old­er grass­roots play­er).

More­over, Nakhid has al­so promised the broad­cast (live or record­ed, we do not know) of DNA match­es. DNA is a hy­brid crea­ture - TTFA-sanc­tioned but not part of of­fi­cial TTFA, "pri­vate" but State-spon­sored, the biggest league in the coun­try but still a "mi­nor" league. Yet, this is more than TTPFL (T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League) has ever of­fered. The Prime Min­is­ter's Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion (un­der the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment like DNA) re­quires all par­tic­i­pat­ing vil­lage groups to "be reg­is­tered with the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs and to have a prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion with an elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture". The pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of both Best Vil­lage and DNA is the same - com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

Giv­en the huge State in­vest­ment, there­fore, one ex­pects that or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and oth­er cri­te­ria were ap­plied to the se­lec­tion of the par­tic­i­pat­ing DNA teams. Nakhid has promised that DNA will not in­clude TTPFL play­ers. This is cor­rect. If it is tru­ly se­ri­ous about cre­at­ing a joint plat­form for com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball and com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, no TTPFL play­er (who is sup­pos­ed­ly part of our elite pool of play­ers) should be al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate. Turn­ing out in a com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion will do noth­ing for such a play­er and on­ly de­grade his game. It will al­so un­der­mine the val­ue of a TTPFL match tick­et. Why should I pay to en­ter a TTPFL match when I could see TTPFL play­ers free of charge in DNA?

Most of all, DNA should pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for non-league tal­ent to be seen. If the league is to serve its stat­ed pur­pose, TTPFL play­ers should not block the spot­light from shin­ing on less­er or less ex­posed play­ers mere­ly be­cause team or­gan­is­ers wish to win. Of course, we will see if all of this is de­liv­ered over the next six months.

A foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion is ob­vi­ous­ly not enough of an in­ter­ven­tion to af­fect crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. That re­quires sup­port­ing pro­grammes. Nakhid has said, "We're go­ing to have civic en­gage­ment with those clubs, we're go­ing to have some com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives, and we're go­ing to hope that these teams and the busi­ness­es in the com­mu­ni­ties come out and sup­port the teams."

What these com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives, their scale and the role of pri­vate cap­i­tal will be, we must wait to see but some are al­ready scep­ti­cal giv­en the Life Sport ex­pe­ri­ence. Once bit­ten, twice shy. But Life Sport is the blue­print for what not to do. The pub­lic de­mands that DNA be op­er­at­ed prop­er­ly. As with the on-field ad­min­is­tra­tion, the lit­mus test for the pro­posed "civic en­gage­ment" will be in the de­liv­ery.

T&T must be the on­ly coun­try in world foot­ball where leagues be­gin at the end of the year - TTPFL be­gan in No­vem­ber and DNA kicks off Sat­ur­day (De­cem­ber 6). With Christ­mas and Car­ni­val both on the hori­zon, it will be in­ter­est­ing to ob­serve if these two com­pe­ti­tions cap­ture the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. Let's see if DNA could re­vive com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball on a na­tion­al scale. And yes, af­ter sev­en­ty-plus years, I re­main as much a gens d'Arime as ever. I will be sup­port­ing who­ev­er is from Ari­ma.