Richard Braith­waite

A few weeks ago, the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Anil Roberts paid a vis­it to the Pa­lo Seco Velo­drome and ex­pressed sur­prise at the phys­i­cal de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty. It is per­haps a good thing that he did not al­so vis­it the Fyz­abad Recre­ation Ground, the Ma­haica Oval in Point Fortin or some of the oth­er sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the Deep South. He would have seen that the di­lap­i­da­tion is even more wide­spread and is per­haps symp­to­matic of a gen­er­al de­cline in sport through­out south Trinidad. Un­for­tu­nate­ly the de­cline is not con­fined to sport but there seems to have been a si­mul­ta­ne­ous drop in cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties. In Pt Fortin, for in­stance, sev­er­al steel­bands have passed in­to obliv­ion in re­cent years in­clud­ing Sun Val­ley and Sil­ver Harps. Hope­ful­ly the resur­gence of Nightin­gales in La Brea is a sig­nal of a change in di­rec­tion but time will tell.

On the is­sue of sport in south, how­ev­er, there al­so seems to have been a fall in per­for­mance stan­dards ex­cept per­haps for La Brea's gold­en boy, quar­ter-mil­er Ron­dell So­ril­lo. For­tu­nate­ly, there is still an abun­dance of raw tal­ent al­though in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties and a lack of de­vel­op­ment struc­tures will cer­tain­ly cur­tail its progress. As it stands the tal­ent­ed young sports­man or woman in the Deep South now has two main op­tions. Ei­ther he or she mi­grates out of the com­mu­ni­ty as many of the bet­ter foot­ballers have done or give up on their sport­ing am­bi­tions en­tire­ly. The fact that youth un­em­ploy­ment in this part of the coun­try is al­so very high sug­gests that the lat­ter al­ter­na­tive will on­ly lead to fur­ther frus­tra­tion and dis­il­lu­sion­ment. It is no won­der that there has been a per­sis­tent prob­lem of drug abuse and ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy through­out the re­gion. On top of that it was re­vealed just last year, that schools in St Patrick record­ed among the high­est lev­els of sus­pen­sions and ex­pul­sions in the coun­try.

All of this would be an anath­e­ma to the el­ders of the re­gion who re­mem­ber a time when par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport was es­sen­tial for in­still­ing self-dis­ci­pline and self-con­fi­dence in the young­sters in their com­mu­ni­ty.

They would al­so re­call the years when some of the best sports­men and women and some of the biggest sport­ing events were part of the south­ern land­scape. The old Tex­a­co South­ern Games, for in­stance, re­mains un­ri­valled in mod­ern times as a fo­rum for cy­cling and ath­let­ic ex­cel­lence. The high lev­el of achieve­ment that was at­tained decades ago was large­ly due to the strate­gic role played by the pi­o­neer oil com­pa­nies in both the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of fa­cil­i­ties as well as the spon­sor­ship of events and pro­grammes. Oil and sport in south Trinidad have had a deep his­tor­i­cal re­la­tion­ship that has nev­er been ful­ly un­der­stood or ap­pre­ci­at­ed. In his book A His­to­ry of Trinidad Oil, au­thor George Hig­gins not­ed that sport was first in­tro­duced as a mech­a­nism for re­duc­ing the heavy drink­ing and gam­bling that took place in the re­mote "oil towns" of the deep south. This ear­ly mar­riage of oil and sport evolved over time pro­duc­ing many out­stand­ing sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties in­clud­ing the great­est of them all Am­bas­sador Hase­ly Craw­ford. The scope of the re­la­tion­ship was seen in the very names of the main sports clubs that emerged from the re­gion.

Where­as in north Trinidad there was Maple, Malvern, Colts and Ca­su­als, in south the names of the top sports clubs re­flect­ed the oil com­pa­nies them­selves eg UBOT, TPD, Shell, Tex­a­co, Tesoro, Trin­topec and Trin­toc. This was not mere co­in­ci­dence but a re­flec­tion of the im­por­tance of sport in the cor­po­rate phi­los­o­phy at the time. Hig­gins al­so record­ed that in those ear­ly years, "every en­cour­age­ment both fi­nan­cial and oth­er­wise was giv­en to sports. Sport grounds, sports equip­ment and club fa­cil­i­ties were pro­vid­ed and the in­ter­est tak­en in the var­i­ous sports gave am­ple proof of the val­ue at­tached." As a re­sult of this ap­proach to com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions, the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try pro­vid­ed some of the finest sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean in­clud­ing foot­ball fields, turf wick­ets, squash courts, bas­ket­ball courts, swim­ming pools, golf cours­es and the cy­cling velo­drome that Min­is­ter Roberts re­cent­ly vis­it­ed. Al­though much of this in­fra­struc­ture has since crum­bled and even more detri­men­tal per­haps, is the loss of so­cial cap­i­tal that was gen­er­at­ed by the many sport­ing pro­grammes that emerged from the al­liance of en­er­gy and sport. De­spite changes in cor­po­rate struc­tures and strate­gies, the en­er­gy sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly the state-owned en­er­gy sec­tor, still has a crit­i­cal role to play not on­ly in sport but in the over­all hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of the com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing its op­er­a­tions.

In De­cem­ber 2008, I was in­vit­ed to speak at a fo­rum or­ga­nized by the South­west Trinidad Cham­ber of Com­merce who were cel­e­brat­ing 100 Years of Oil. The top­ic was the role of the en­er­gy sec­tor in the de­vel­op­ment of sport. I re­marked at the time that "the his­to­ry of south Trinidad re­veals that sport has al­ways been a cat­a­lyst for so­cial de­vel­op­ment and a sig­nif­i­cant source of in­spi­ra­tion for res­i­dents in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. It al­so served as an im­por­tant re­minder that the wealth in this part of the coun­try is much more than oil and gas and it in­cludes the abun­dant tal­ent of the peo­ple of the re­gion". For­tu­nate­ly a more mean­ing­ful and long-term ap­proach to com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions seems to be re-emerg­ing with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor through var­i­ous CSR ini­tia­tives. Hope­ful­ly the Min­is­ter's time­ly vis­it will ac­cel­er­ate the grow­ing aware­ness of the role that sport can play in com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment not on­ly in south Trinidad but through­out the coun­try.