​“I come to shine meh na­tion­al­ly brighter

We will at­tack

We will de­fend

We go­ing to pres­sure them to de very end

And any op­po­si­tion dat we meet. Hear me now

We go de­feat them by we feet

We go shine with all we might

90 min­utes of red, black and white, hear me now

Any­time you see we in we uni­form

To get vic­to­ry is ah norm”

(Max­imus Dan – "Fight­er" lyrics)

​No­vem­ber is for­ev­er etched in the minds of T&T cit­i­zens, and not be­cause it is more of­ten than not, just around nine months af­ter the great­est show on earth — Car­ni­val — but rather be­cause of FOOT­BALL.

​No­vem­ber 2025 promis­es to be no dif­fer­ent in terms of re­mem­brance, but whether it will be a tear­ful day like No­vem­ber 19, 1989, or a cel­e­bra­to­ry day like No­vem­ber 16, 2005, will be known soon, come Thurs­day (No­vem­ber 13), as T&T bat­tle Ja­maica in a must-win World Cup Qual­i­fi­er.

​And there­in lies my con­ster­na­tion when I hear and ob­serve the be­hav­iour of our cit­i­zens who ap­pear slow to re­act to this crit­i­cal match. It is this in­ac­tion and mind­less pause in some, from spec­ta­tors to spon­sors, that shows — We are not a true sport­ing na­tion.

​We are pre­tenders. We talk big (even though we say we leave that to politi­cians) but de­liv­er even less, be­cause many of you read­ing this are ei­ther guilty or have a friend or fam­i­ly that is like­wise cul­pa­ble of not wish­ing or car­ing to spend mon­ey to at­tend a match that could de­ter­mine your coun­try’s fu­ture in the World Cup. Yet still, you have all the ad­vice in the world for coach Dwight Yorke and his team, while pre­pared to watch at home.

Cit­i­zens, (no, let me amend and say in­stead) in­hab­i­tants of T&T, it can­not be about price. From hav­ing to pay be­tween TT$200 to $350 for a three-hour foot­ball event, many of you are com­mit­ted to pay­ing over TT$1,500 while stand­ing for over four or five hours at a Car­ni­val func­tion. So, clear­ly, it is about self-mo­ti­va­tion and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion for many of you rather than coun­try, and please don’t try to fool your­selves. Loy­al fans of foot­ball clubs/teams come out to sup­port their team de­spite the odds. So, you are not one, plain and sim­ple. All over Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, in our re­gion of qual­i­fi­ca­tion, that would nev­er hap­pen.

​In fact, un­like our late-mind­ed sup­port­ers who ar­rive dur­ing the first half, coun­tries in our re­gion are there two to three hours be­fore kick­off. Can you imag­ine if Ja­maica walk out to test the sur­face and they hear and watch 20,000 fans in red, how much they will be in­tim­i­dat­ed? But our fans ap­pear obliv­i­ous to what true sup­port means; they will prob­a­bly be strolling in un­con­cerned as usu­al. Per­haps on Thurs­day, they will prove me wrong, but we will see.

​I have dis­missed the many that write on so­cial me­dia or call in­to pro­grammes with their wide-rang­ing opin­ions on foot­ball but ap­par­ent­ly fail to re­alise the im­por­tance of their pres­ence at a match, and what that over­whelm­ing sup­port does for the home team and, at best, in­tim­i­dates the op­po­si­tion.

​Ja­maica, many have sound­ed off, will be buoyed by the Melis­sa hur­ri­cane dis­as­ter and so play­ing for their coun­try, but that must not hin­der a T&T per­spec­tive on win­ning the match. This is sports and sen­ti­ment has no part in that, and for our beloved twin-is­land re­pub­lic, this is a chance to "Ex­hale".

​When we look at the sup­port giv­en to our foot­ball team for these match­es, in par­tic­u­lar by Cor­po­rate T&T, we have to say “shame­ful,” "abysmal," and "trou­bling" by those in au­thor­i­ty in many of these so-called pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions in this coun­try that make loads of mon­ey from the earn­ings of the peo­ple of T&T dai­ly and month­ly.

​When you have a cur­so­ry glance, not even an in­ves­tiga­tive ex­am­i­na­tion, of the fi­nan­cial sup­port giv­en to the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) in T&T, one could be ex­cused for think­ing that the old adage of sup­port­ing “the elite Eu­ro­pean class” still ex­ists in this coun­try, be­cause no one can hon­est­ly as­sert that in­vest­ment in the CPL will pro­mote T&T, the coun­try, more than our coun­try qual­i­fy­ing for a foot­ball World Cup for the sec­ond time. The mon­ey spent and equat­ed to the re­turns would be over the moon, and even a non-fi­nan­cial per­son (No AC­CA back­ground) should be able to com­pre­hend this. And here­in we are not even men­tion­ing the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect this has on peo­ple men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, and holis­ti­cal­ly. All of this pre­sumes this in­di­vid­ual cares about the coun­try first and not their self-in­ter­est and self-pro­mo­tion.

​I have to, though, sin­gle out sev­er­al per­sons who have demon­strat­ed their love of coun­try first above every­thing else, in­clud­ing pol­i­tics, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to: For­mer T&T foot­ball cap­tain and now a Sen­a­tor and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, David Nakhid, whose en­er­gy for sports is clear and con­sis­tent, as well as the ex­treme­ly proac­tive and vi­brant Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary V Ma­haraj and many oth­ers in sev­er­al of the Min­istries with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure pass­ports and oth­er doc­u­ments are processed time­ly for their time­less work so that coach Dwight Yorke could have avail­able cer­tain play­ers dur­ing this cam­paign and at crit­i­cal times. This sup­port is no­tice­able be­cause it sug­gests that some are un­der­stand­ing the role of sports in this coun­try, and long may it con­tin­ue, so thank you to all the above and oth­ers un­named.

​Pol­i­tics will nev­er unite, and we need to ac­cept that and for­ev­er re­mem­ber that sports change lives, change des­tiny, and unite every­one, man, woman, and child.

​So, to­mor­row Thurs­day (No­vem­ber 13), let us hope that as a coun­try, all of T&T can stand up and let our col­lec­tive voic­es ring out loud and clear with dis­tinc­tive sup­port and rhythm as on­ly we can for our team at a packed Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. It is not too late, GET YOUR TICK­ETS NOW, and be the 12th Man.

​Let's do this to­geth­er on Thurs­day…one peo­ple, one voice, on­wards to VIC­TO­RY.