Shaun Fuentes

Try to pic­ture this! You're walk­ing on­to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um play­ing pitch be­fore a packed out crowd for a Fi­fa World Cup match. You're lin­ing up along­side Ken­wyne Jones for T&T at the 2001 Fi­fa Un­der-17 World Cup against the likes of Brazil, Aus­tralia and Croa­t­ia. A foot­ball ca­reer seems set to blos­som. Three years lat­er you wake up in a nurs­ing home af­ter be­ing knocked un­con­scious and mere weeks lat­er you're told you can nev­er play the game again. Ja­mal Hamid can tell the sto­ry to­day from re­al life ex­pe­ri­ence. Hamid suf­fered a se­vere brain con­cus­sion when he was struck on the back of his head by an el­bow of an op­pos­ing play­er in a Su­per League match be­tween Joe Pub­lic and Ca­roni on Au­gust 10, 2004. Jan­u­ary that year saw him tour Bermu­da with the na­tion­al se­nior team. It would be the last time he made a na­tion­al team. Hamid was un­der the care of T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) medics in­clud­ing Doc­tor Ter­rence Bab­wah fol­low­ing the hor­rid in­jury and is to­day em­ployed at the Con­ca­caf De­vel­op­ment Of­fice, Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya where he's ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sec­ond life "in foot­ball."

"The re­cov­ery process was dif­fi­cult be­cause hon­est­ly every­day I would be in a lot of pain and I would be frus­trat­ed. I was un­able to walk and I had to learn how to walk all over but thanks to Dr Ter­rence Bab­wah I be­came mo­bile again," the 27-year-old Hamid said. "I don't re­mem­ber much about that day the in­jury took place. Our team man­ag­er Sam Phillip told me when I woke up at Med­ical As­so­ciates that I was struck on the head and I was in a neck brace and couldn't move. I pan­icked but Mr Phillip helped me to calm down. Imag­ine I was in pam­pers as well. That part was even scari­er for me. I didn't know what was hap­pen­ing to me," Hamid re­called. The ex-Ari­ma Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive stu­dent and Mal­oney res­i­dent works be­hind the scenes to en­sure all the var­i­ous cours­es and work­shops for Con­ca­caf comes off smooth­ly at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence and he's grate­ful to Jack Warn­er for look­ing af­ter his in­ter­ests.

"I'm grate­ful to Mr Jack Warn­er, who has been like a fa­ther fig­ure from day one, for putting every­thing in place for my re­cov­ery and Jinelle James of their Con­ca­caf Tech­ni­cal De­part­ment as well as and Jamil­la Charles of the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence for their guid­ance. Michael Mc­Comie, who was the Joe Pub­lic coach at the time of my in­jury, was al­so there with me every step of the way. "My daugh­ter Bri­seis is a great part of my world now. She was born two days be­fore I start­ed my job at Con­ca­caf in March 2008 and she keeps me go­ing . "I still get seizures some­times but I'm hap­py to be alive and able to work on the oth­er side of foot­ball now. I get to see the foot­ball world from a dif­fer­ent an­gle and I thank God for that every­day," end­ed Hamid, who will be shout­ing his lungs out for Jones in next month's FA Cup Fi­nal.

Jones eyes FA Cup win­ners medal

Strik­er Ken­wyne Jones ad­mits that Stoke City will be the un­der­dogs in next month's FA Cup Fi­nal against Man­ches­ter City but warns that the less favoured team will be pumped for the en­counter and shall not be tak­en light­ly. Jones will be­come on­ly the third Trinida­di­an to ap­pear in an Eng­lish FA Cup Fi­nal. Dwight Yorke was the first to do so, in the 1999 Fi­nal for Man­ches­ter Unit­ed in their 2-0 win over New­cas­tle Unit­ed, com­ing on in the 60th minute for Andy Cole. Then there was goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop for West Ham Unit­ed in their loss to Liv­er­pool in May of 2006. Steven Ger­rard scored a 91st minute equalis­er for Liv­er­pool to make it 3-3 forc­ing the game in­to ex­tra time and penal­ty kicks. His­lop saved a penal­ty but the "Ham­mers" still lost 3-1. Bob­by Zamo­ra, who is el­i­gi­ble to play for T&T, was al­so in that West Ham squad.

"I am very hap­py to reach the FA Cup Fi­nal as it's every foot­baller's dream to play in one and al­so to walk out on­to the pitch at Wem­b­ley. Be­ing the third Trinida­di­an to do so is al­so an­oth­er fan­tas­tic feat that I'm look­ing for­ward to and I'm very hap­py to be held in very high es­teem as my two fel­low coun­try­men," Jones added. He ex­pects Stoke to ap­proach the game in the same man­ner they did in their 5-0 thump­ing of Bolton Wan­der­ers. "Well just like it was for the semi­fi­nal we're prob­a­bly al­ready writ­ten off but as it's gone many times this sea­son there can be up­sets. Man­ches­ter City are ex­pect­ed to win be­cause of their mas­sive re­sources but we will ap­proach the game with a lot of be­lief and fo­cus and hope­ful­ly we can pull this one off," Jones added. The on­ly oth­er Trinida­di­ans to ap­pear in an FA Cup Fi­nal in the Unit­ed King­dom was Jer­ren Nixon when he ap­peared in the 86th minute of Dundee's 1-0 win over Glas­gow Rangers while Ja­son Scot­land and Collin Samuel both ap­peared for Dundee Unit­ed in the fi­nal when they lost 1-0 to Celtic in 2005.

Pelti­er set­tles in Slo­va­kia

Fresh from scor­ing his first goal for AS Trencin in their 6-1 rout of FK Bod­va Mol­da­va nad Bod­vou in the Slo­va­kian Sec­ond Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day, Lester Pelti­er is try­ing to fight his way in­to be­com­ing a reg­u­lar starter for the cur­rent league lead­ers. "I want to start every match and hope­ful­ly if I can keep play­ing well every time I get on the pitch then I will im­press the coach­ing staff suf­fi­cient­ly to be in the first eleven," Pelti­er said. I feel blessed at the mo­ment be­cause it's been a dream of mine for a long time to play out here in Eu­rope. God has pre­sent­ed me with this op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case my tal­ent and I'm seiz­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty." Pelti­er was grate­ful to his agent Gre­go­ry Gore from Hol­land, de­scrib­ing him as a "fa­ther fig­ure" as well as Los An­ge­les-based agent Rain­er Ne­gri who as­sist­ed in set­ting up the tri­als. The for­mer San Juan Jabloteh and Ma Pau FC play­er is now keen on get­ting on Ot­to Pfis­ter's list for the na­tion­al team. "Of course I want to earn a re­call. It's a great ho­n­our to play at the na­tion­al lev­el and be able to rep­re­sent the coun­try. I hope that be­ing in Eu­rope will give me a greater chance of gain­ing a place on the na­tion­al squad. I would love to play a part on the na­tion­al team's qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Brazil 2014 once giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty," Pelti­er added.

Jorsling's Or­lan­do to play Bolton

For­mer De­fence Force strik­er De­vorn Jorsling and Kevin Moli­no will get the chance to line up against Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship side Bolton Wan­der­ers when they tour the US for pre­sea­son on Ju­ly 17. Or­lan­do will al­so en­ter­tain New­cas­tle Unit­ed ahead of the new Eng­lish sea­son. Hot on the heels of the an­nounce­ment that New­cas­tle Unit­ed are head­ing to Cen­tral Flori­da, Or­lan­do City Soc­cer Club al­so an­nounced that Eng­lish Pre­mier League side Bolton Wan­der­ers will be tour­ing Or­lan­do. Bolton will train for a week be­fore play­ing Or­lan­do City in an In­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly game on Ju­ly 17. City en­joyed a 1-0 win over Char­lotte Ea­gles on the week­end in Amer­i­can USL ac­tion but nei­ther play­er fea­tured. Keon Daniel, though, en­joyed a bet­ter week­end as he re­port­ed­ly put on a strong show­ing in Philadel­phia Union's 1-1 draw with Seat­tle Sounders in the MLS on Sat­ur­day. Like Daniel, Julius James al­so played a full 90 min­utes as Colum­bus Crew de­feat­ed Sport­ing Kansas 1-0 while Chris Bir­chall al­so fea­ture in LA Galaxy's 1-0 win over Chica­go Fire. Over in Eng­land, Car­los Ed­wards saw full ac­tion in Ip­swich Town's 1-0 win over Bris­tol City as his team press­es for a play­off spot in the Cham­pi­onship while Khaleem Hy­land al­so played all of Zulte Waregem's 1-0 win over Bel­gium coun­ter­parts Ko­r­trijk.

Shaun Fuentes is the me­dia of­fi­cer for the TTFF/So­ca War­riors.