His­to­ry is writ­ten by great and or­di­nary peo­ple, in every walk of life, every day. They leave their mark on the gen­er­a­tions that fol­low.

In 1950, the Ko­re­an War erupt­ed be­tween North Ko­rea, sup­port­ed by Chi­na and the So­vi­et Union and the Unit­ed Na­tions coali­tion led by the Unit­ed States; the first com­mer­cial jet air­lin­er, the de Hav­il­land Comet, made its maid­en flight, mark­ing the be­gin­ning of a new era in air trav­el; George Or­well’s “Shoot­ing an Ele­phant” was pub­lished; an al­liance be­tween the “But­ler par­ty” and East In­di­an lead­ers won eight of twen­ty-six seats on the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil that gov­erned colo­nial Trinidad and To­ba­go; and a group of young men from San Fer­nan­do met at the Lantern Cafe on Cof­fee Street and formed a foot­ball club.

They named it Lantern Gi­ants. Over the decades since 1950 the club hit the heights of South foot­ball, won ti­tles, pro­duced na­tion­al team play­ers, sent boys on aca­d­e­m­ic schol­ar­ships, fell in­to de­cline, re­duced to “the mud out­side Skin­ner Park” as one club of­fi­cial put it; and rose again. And the club’s name mor­phed from Lantern Gi­ants to Cof­fee Gi­ants to San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants of to­day’s Trinidad and To­ba­go Pre­mier Foot­ball League (Tier 2).

On 1 No­vem­ber, at Hare­ly Door­ly Hall in St. Paul’s An­gli­can church on Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do, the club cel­e­brat­ed its his­toric 75th an­niver­sary with a din­ner and awards cer­e­mo­ny. In the com­pa­ny of found­ing, past and cur­rent club play­ers, I was priv­i­leged to be count­ed among a list of in­vit­ed foot­ball and sport dig­ni­taries, in­clud­ing Strike Squad mem­bers Clay­ton Mor­ris, Bri­an Williams and Ker­ry Jamer­son; Lennox Sir­juesingh, for­mer in­ter­na­tion­al ref­er­ee rep­re­sent­ing the Vet­er­ans Foot­ball Or­ga­ni­za­tion; Kester Lendore, Chair­man of SporTT; David Nakhid, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport; Den­nis Lat­iff, Pres­i­dent of the South­ern FA; Han­ni­bal Na­j­jar, for­mer na­tion­al coach; and Ian Bain, for­mer na­tion­al play­er and the fea­ture speak­er.

At age 75, San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants is the old­est ac­tive foot­ball club in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Led by club stal­wart Dr. Alvin Hen­der­son who re­vived the club from slum­ber in the ear­ly 1980s, its his­to­ry was re­count­ed and the re­mark­able na­ture of the gath­er­ing, the lay­ers and gen­er­a­tions of club and South foot­ball his­to­ry - peo­ple for whom I have the great­est ad­mi­ra­tion and re­spect - be­came clear.

RECORD IT OR IT DIES

Yes, His­to­ry is writ­ten every day but some­one has to record it. Asked to say a few words to the gath­er­ing, among my re­marks I chal­lenged the club to ini­ti­ate a project to doc­u­ment its his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of South foot­ball. Like every oth­er foot­ball club in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Gi­ants faces a dai­ly pri­or­i­ty list of sur­vival tasks that it must per­form to get to to­mor­row. My hope is that it will be pos­si­ble for them to in­volve the wider South com­mu­ni­ty in doc­u­ment­ing the club’s and re­gion’s out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al foot­ball. We live in an era when young peo­ple be­lieve foot­ball be­gan with You Tube, Mes­si and Ronal­do.

The TTFA, born in 1908, af­ter al­most one hun­dred and twen­ty years does not have a li­brary of our his­to­ry or even a Hall of Fame for our most fa­mous play­ers. Our youth do not know who Sed­ley Joseph, Leroy DeLeon, Ker­ry Jamer­son or Stern John were/are. This is our col­lec­tive fail­ing. And it is con­sis­tent with our na­tion­al dis­re­gard for His­to­ry, as a whole. Ask chil­dren, even many adults, what is the sig­nif­i­cance of Memo­r­i­al Park in Port of Spain or how Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do got its name and do not be sur­prised at the blank stares you get in re­turn. If our foot­ball his­to­ry re­mains un­doc­u­ment­ed it will die.

I was born in Ari­ma in 1953, three years af­ter those South boys found­ed their club. I was a “coun­try boy” like they were. And I can­not re­mem­ber a time when I have not been in love with “the beau­ti­ful game”. It was with keen in­ter­est that I lis­tened to ra­dio broad­casts of match­es dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s. Chil­dren to­day do not un­der­stand but, of course, there was no tele­vi­sion for most of that pe­ri­od. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly the ra­dio car­ried an in­ter-league match in­volv­ing Lantern Gi­ants and I won­dered at the ori­gin of their ex­ot­ic name. I did not know that fifty years lat­er, as Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Su­per League (TTSL) I would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty in 2018 to fa­cil­i­tate their en­try in­to the league as cham­pi­on of the South­ern FA.

POL­I­TICS, POL­I­TICS

Su­per League was no easy league to play in. I know be­cause my own club, FC San­ta Rosa, won it that sea­son for its sec­ond ti­tle in three years. Yet new boys Gi­ants bat­tled and fin­ished tenth in the four­teen team ta­ble, avoid­ing rel­e­ga­tion. Off the field 2018 was a time of deep po­lit­i­cal fer­ment and con­tro­ver­sy in TTFA. David John-Williams was Pres­i­dent and there was dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his regime over mat­ters of in­ter­nal democ­ra­cy, trans­par­ent ad­min­is­tra­tion and fi­nan­cial ac­count­abil­i­ty. In Au­gust 2017 the TTSL mem­ber­ship elect­ed me to rep­re­sent them at the TTFA Board of Di­rec­tors.

Af­ter de­flect­ing ef­forts to pre­vent me from as­sum­ing my seat I ar­rived there in 2018. At my first meet­ing I made it clear that I was there to rep­re­sent the clubs’ in­ter­ests and the in­ter­ests of na­tion­al foot­ball, not to tow the TTFA par­ty line. The bat­tle was joined, spilling over in­to TTSL as a small num­ber of clubs sought to dis­rupt the league in sup­port of oth­er peo­ple’s agen­da. To their eter­nal cred­it Gi­ants pro­vid­ed me with ready and re­li­able po­lit­i­cal sup­port. The strug­gle end­ed in John-Williams’ de­feat in the 2019 elec­tion of of­fi­cers. As far as I am con­cerned San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants stood on the right side of His­to­ry. In 2020 mem­bers ex­pressed their con­fi­dence in Gi­ants by elect­ing its rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nicholas Gopaul to the TTSL Board.

LOOK­ING FOR­WARD

Sev­en­ty-five years is a long time in the life of any­thing. It takes com­mit­ment, dis­ci­pline and the abil­i­ty to re­fresh it­self for any or­ga­ni­za­tion to sur­vive for such a long time. In am­a­teur sport/foot­ball vol­un­teerism is cen­tral to longevi­ty. But we live in the era of short at­ten­tion span, self-cen­trened­ness and fi­nan­cial de­mands. In the face of that, San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants and clubs like it rep­re­sent the con­stant strug­gle for, and the some time tri­umph of, com­mu­ni­ty spir­it. The club has es­tab­lished con­crete pri­or­i­ty ob­jec­tives for the com­ing years: 1) to ac­quire a club house, 2) to se­cure its own field, and 3) to in­ten­si­fy the hu­man de­vel­op­ment of its play­ers.

Ob­jec­tive 2 is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant to the club be­cause it can­not play its home match­es at Skin­ner Park, the Mec­ca of South foot­ball, be­cause the re­mod­el­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty re­duced the space avail­able for the foot­ball field. I have a spe­cial place in my heart for Skin­ner Park.

In 1972 I won a schol­ar­ship to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty there, play­ing as cap­tain of the na­tion­al Un­der-19 team against the uni­ver­si­ty, in­clud­ing Alvin Hen­der­son and Ian Bain. I per­formed well. Af­ter the match coach Lin­coln Phillips asked me to join his team, which I did in Au­gust of that year. I nev­er played for Trinidad and To­ba­go again but the move de­vel­oped my foot­ball and shaped my life. I won the NCAA ti­tle and earned two de­grees at Howard, thanks to a chance meet­ing in Skin­ner Park. No Skin­ner Park di­min­ish­es South foot­ball cul­ture. But I di­gress.

Ian Bain, my Howard team mate, in his ex­cel­lent fea­ture ad­dress stat­ed his opin­ion that Unit­ed States col­lege coach­es no longer be­lieve we pro­duce play­ers of req­ui­site qual­i­ty, that the Tri­ni pipeline, which once in­clud­ed Sha­ka His­lop and David Nakhid, has dried up. He opined that our play­ers should con­cen­trate on schol­ar­ships and seek pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers af­ter­wards, which he con­sid­ers a bet­ter path­way to Life than go­ing off to small mon­ey leagues (which in­creas­ing num­bers of our best tal­ents are do­ing). Agree or not, as a San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants sup­port­er/con­sul­tant he un­der­lined the in­ten­tion of the club to re-fo­cus on the pipeline it once op­er­at­ed for stu­dent foot­ballers. Good luck to them.

My wife and I are the own­ers of FC San­ta Rosa, twice TTSL cham­pi­on. The club is thir­ty-three years old. I know how ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult it is to op­er­ate a small club and to be suc­cess­ful on and off the field. But such is dai­ly life in our sport. I wrote this ar­ti­cle so I could pub­licly con­grat­u­late San Fer­nan­do Gi­ants for their re­mark­able achieve­ment and to wish them good luck with the fight for pro­mo­tion this sea­son. Well done to all who laboured in the vine­yard! On to the next twen­ty-five years!