?Hugh Hen­der­son

I have to con­fess that up to quite re­cent­ly I was a bit of a male chau­vin­ist when it came to women play­ing foot­ball. For seem­ing­ly end­less years while liv­ing in Cana­da, I watched my daugh­ter play in every age group in the biggest league in North Amer­i­ca, and while I did my best to be the de­vot­ed and en­cour­ag­ing Dad, if the truth be told watch­ing the games was pure tor­ture. Fast for­ward three decades and watch­ing my grand-daugh­ter and her teams was no bet­ter. How­ev­er, in Au­gust while on va­ca­tion, I hap­pened to see a few in­ter­na­tion­al women's foot­ball games on TV, and my eyes opened quite wide at the play­ers' speed, fit­ness and all-round skills. Like St Paul, my con­ver­sion had be­gun. The re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Un­der-17 ladies tour­na­ment held lo­cal­ly was a treat to watch, es­pe­cial­ly the semis and the fi­nal. The qual­i­ty of play was amaz­ing and some of the goals could not be bet­tered by men any­where.

It was fit­ting that Jack Warn­er was able to bring the likes of Sepp Blat­ter, Franz Beck­en­bauer, David Beck­ham and Ru­ud Guil­lit to wit­ness the ex­cit­ing fi­nal–what a pity one team had to lose through penal­ty kicks. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Jack Warn­er had to ad­mit that there was no way he would ever again en­dure the trau­ma in­volved to bring such a tour­na­ment to fruition in this coun­try. T&T may well be beau­ti­ful in many ways, but it sure is not beau­ti­ful when it comes to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­mit­ment to dead­lines, dis­ci­pline, cor­rup­tion, over­com­ing bu­reau­cra­cy and the "what's in it for me?" syn­drome. As one who has lived over­seas for many years and been ex­posed to the high­est no-non­sense stan­dards to com­plete a project, I can at­test to the nev­er-end­ing frus­tra­tion in try­ing to get the sim­plest of things done in T&T. Jack Warn­er must have night­mares as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port. Tom, Dick and Har­ri­lal are all bawl­ing for more mon­ey, but if they get it from Gov­ern­ment, it won't–in many cas­es–be be­cause of con­sis­tent hard work.

Can 'hard work' pay for Net girls?

Re­gard­ing "hard work", I am in­ter­est­ed to see how our net­ball team fares at the Com­mon­wealth Games, on­ly be­cause a TV sports re­port in­di­cat­ed that the team had prac­ticed every day since March. Does this equate to "hard work" in most minds? Prob­a­bly! I would agree if it was March 2008 or even 2009, but do we re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ex­pect to be a win­ner on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage start­ing "hard work" on­ly in March 2010? Do we re­al­ly un­der­stand what it takes to be the best? I am not blam­ing the play­ers but the ad­min­is­tra­tors for lack of ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive and de­tailed long term plan­ning. Prove me wrong please!

Fu­ture not rosy for WI crick­et

The WICB has scrapped the would-be Pro­fes­sion­al League sup­pos­ed­ly be­cause of the poor world econ­o­my and the dif­fi­cul­ty in ob­tain­ing spon­sors. Those sound like two plau­si­ble rea­sons, but the world is still spin­ning and spon­sors are al­ways look­ing for good op­por­tu­ni­ties. The prob­lem is that Caribbean crick­et is not at present a good op­por­tu­ni­ty–the prod­uct has vir­tu­al­ly no mar­ket­ing ap­peal and the way things are go­ing with nev­er end­ing con­flict at all lev­els, the fu­ture is not ex­act­ly rosy.

One should al­ways be op­ti­mistic and re­al­is­tic, but when one reads that in lo­cal T&T crick­et, clubs are com­plain­ing about the fi­nan­cial de­mands of both over­seas and lo­cal crick­eters to play for the high­est bid­ding club, you know we are in trou­ble. Does club loy­al­ty still ex­ist? When mon­ey is not on­ly king, but ace, queen and jack as well–bet­ter you than me to solve the prob­lem. And we want a pro­fes­sion­al league? By the way, let's hope that WIBC re­sist the temp­ta­tion to se­lect those who did not sign the re­tain­er con­tracts–play­ers should not have their cake and eat it if we are to set a stan­dard of ethics and loy­al­ty to coun­try.

Of 'camps' and 're­treats'

The fad is still "camps" for sport­ing teams and "re­treats" for politi­cians but the div­i­dends have not been mind-bog­gling. Now, I read that the Eng­land crick­et team vis­it­ed a wartime con­cen­tra­tion camp in Ger­many to "bond", and our T&T na­tion­al team spent two days in To­co to "bond". Be­fore the 1995 Rug­by World Cup in South Africa, the na­tion­al rug­by team vis­it­ed Robben Is­land and ac­tu­al­ly spent time in the cell which Nel­son Man­dela oc­cu­pied. The ob­jec­tive of this ex­er­cise was to al­low the play­ers to bet­ter re­late to the man who was us­ing/urg­ing them as rug­by play­ers to bring racial har­mo­ny to South Africa. (See the film "In­vic­tus").

It may be a triv­ial point, but I think "bond" is the wrong word to de­scribe these ex­pe­ri­ences which in them­selves have much val­ue. How about "ed­u­cate" or "ma­ture" or "ap­pre­ci­ate his­to­ry/na­ture" or "broad­en hori­zons"–all these terms in­di­cate that each play­er will now be a wis­er, more un­der­stand­ing, ob­jec­tive and sen­si­tive per­son than he/she was be­fore the par­tic­u­lar ex­pe­ri­ence. Daren Gan­ga men­tioned that the team had to run up and down hills and cross streams, which they prob­a­bly had not done be­fore. I do not know if that re­sult­ed in "bond­ing" (how­ev­er de­fined) but hope­ful­ly it made them re­alise and ap­pre­ci­ate the sort of train­ing Hasley Craw­ford had to en­dure to win an Olympic Gold Medal and that suc­cess is the re­sult of ef­fort, com­mit­ment, self-dis­ci­pline and sac­ri­fice. They would have seen an ex­pe­ri­ence through "dif­fer­ent eyes" and ap­pre­ci­at­ed that there is some­thing called "a dif­fer­ent point of view".

I am not sure if I am mak­ing my point clear­ly, but the fact is that in beau­ti­ful T&T, we are gen­er­al­ly shal­low-mind­ed, un­aware of the re­al world out­side our shores, de­pen­dent on the "gimme gimme" syn­drome and be­liev­ing that God is a Tri­ni no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances. There­fore, run­ning up and down hills and cross­ing streams is just one of the many phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties (add cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties) that should make us val­ue life all the more and I en­cour­age Daren's guys to con­tin­ue to ex­plore what T&T has to of­fer in like vein, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to win crick­et tour­na­ments but to be­come bet­ter and more in­ter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ties. Of course, the best so­lu­tion of all is to "bond" spir­i­tu­al­ly with God, who will lead us along the right paths phys­i­cal­ly, so­cial­ly and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly. What more can we ask for? It sounds so sim­ple–how tough is it to be hon­est, civ­il to one an­oth­er and try our best every day?

Thanks for vis­it to YTC

I end by thank­ing "whomev­er" for ar­rang­ing for the vis­it­ing Dutch foot­ballers un­der Ru­ud Guil­lit to play a game last week at Youth Train­ing Cen­tre in Arou­ca. The vis­i­tors beat the lads hand­i­ly, but the score mat­tered not. All 180 young of­fend­ers were al­lowed out to view the game, and as I lis­tened to their ac­counts it was clear once again how much young peo­ple need at­ten­tion and a car­ing at­ti­tude to show them the way for­ward. When will we learn that every­one, no mat­ter their track record, wants des­per­ate­ly to feel loved and know that he/she is spe­cial in the eyes of oth­ers?