The aim at every stage in the ath­let­ic ca­reer of an in­di­vid­ual should be to fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of the whole per­son than just the ath­let­ic per­son. This cer­tain­ly be­comes ever more im­por­tant for the fu­ture of these folks, not just sports­peo­ple, where they en­ter a dif­fer­ent stage of their ca­reer or a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry. The on­ly way to en­sure that is by com­mit­ment to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of our ath­letes right from the out­set and through­out their ath­let­ic ca­reers.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with for­mer T&T mid­field­er Car­los Ed­wards a cou­ple days ago on a sim­i­lar top­ic. This is a man who played for T&T at the FI­FA World Cup in 2006 but one of very few from this coun­try to play in the Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship.

Ed­wards is now a play­er with Bury Town FC in Eng­land but al­so in­volved in the man­age­ment side. He wel­comed two as­pir­ing pro­fes­sion­al play­ers from this coun­try at Bury last week in Gary Grif­fith III and Jesse Williams. Both play­ers have reg­is­tered with Col­eraine FC in the North­ern Ire­land Pre­mier League and are cur­rent­ly try­ing to get their foot­ing on sol­id ground on the Eu­ro­pean stage.

Nei­ther have ever rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try at the se­nior lev­el and had been in large­ly un­fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry over the past month. So you could imag­ine what it might have been like for both of them be­ing able to train along­side the for­mer T&T World Cup vet­er­an dur­ing their stint at Bury.

“It’s been a once in a life­time ex­pe­ri­ence for us so far. The lads at Col­eraine have been ex­cep­tion­al and we al­ready feel like part of the fam­i­ly,” said Grif­fith III.

“We have put our best foot for­ward and I be­lieve that trust­ing in God and the whole process. This is al­so a way of show­ing peo­ple that per­sis­tence, hard work and be­lief pays off. At the end of the day we are all striv­ing to im­prove our craft and be able to then rep­re­sent our coun­try in the best way pos­si­ble.” he said

Williams point­ed out: “With this jour­ney it's been quite dif­fi­cult at times be­ing retest­ed (for COVID-19) on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions which some­times threw us off. But it’s foot­ball we came to play and this is what we signed up for so we’ve come out here and giv­en it our best.

“It’s been eas­i­er to ac­cli­ma­tise be­ing in the pres­ence of each oth­er and of course see­ing a fa­mil­iar face. We all share the same goals and com­ing in­to a new fam­i­ly at Col­eraine FC has made the process a lit­tle eas­i­er. But we are in a new en­vi­ron­ment and we are learn­ing every­day.

"But the main thing is putting your faith in God and know­ing that every­day day you wake up means you have a chance of suc­ceed­ing.”

For­mer stars such as Ed­wards demon­strat­ing that their in­puts can help oth­ers who are in search of op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­cel or at least con­tin­ue their de­vel­op­ment is def­i­nite­ly some­thing we as a na­tion should feel good about as it re­lates to our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions

Ed­wards un­der­stands that suc­cess doesn’t come overnight. It takes time and com­mit­ment to build the skills nec­es­sary to per­form on the big stage and for ath­letes like him, it is nev­er just a job. It is a chal­lenge and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get bet­ter every day. This is what he’s tried to pass on to the young duo over the cou­ple days he shared with them.

“So far the re­ports have been good on both of them. Ob­vi­ous­ly they are young and there is lot for them to take on board out here. They both gave a de­cent ac­count of them­selves when they lined up for Ip­swich Town in a game against Bury and I’m ac­tu­al­ly quite sur­prised to see how well they have adapt­ed to the con­di­tions here,” said Ed­wards.

“But the main thing for me was be­ing able to be in­volved in a warm-up with them be­fore one of our games and even though we didn’t play the game to­geth­er I was able to in­ter­act with them and touch on a few things. At this stage of my life and ca­reer these are im­por­tant mo­ments. It al­lows me to work clos­er with young per­sons like Gary and Jesse and try to put them on the right path. When you are out here in this en­vi­ron­ment every 15 min­utes or few ses­sions to­geth­er goes a long way.

“What I tried to make clear to them is that they both have to be their own selves. Don’t try to be like each oth­er or like an­oth­er play­er in the team. They must ex­press them­selves and their own style in train­ing and in the ac­tu­al game. It’s what per­sons like my­self and Stern (John) and even Dwight (Yorke) did when we were over here from the ear­ly days. All three of us end­ed up to­geth­er at Sun­der­land and it was the same thing,” Ed­wards added. He spoke of a cur­rent arrange­ment he and oth­er past play­ers are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in to of­fer more op­por­tu­ni­ties for young T&T play­ers.

There are no guar­an­tees in this are­na. In spite of every­thing hap­pen­ing at the mo­ment it's may not be all doom and gloom in our foot­ball cir­cles. From one phase to the next we can hope­ful­ly keep push­ing!

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.