WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of the T&T Strike Squad, which came with­in a point of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 1990 FI­FA World Cup in Italy, cel­e­brat­ed 34 years of unit­ing the na­tion and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty through foot­ball at an An­niver­sary Mem­o­ries cer­e­mo­ny at the Bey Bed and Break­fast in El So­cor­ro on Sat­ur­day night.

It was not the first time that for­mer cap­tain of the 1989 Strike Squad Clay­ton Mor­ris had met with his troops—Dex­ter Fran­cis, Floyd Lawrence, Mar­vin Faustin, Bri­an Williams, Ker­ry Jame­son, Hut­son “Bar­ber” Charles, Kelvin Jones, Er­rol Lovell, Michael Mau­rice and Mau­rice Al­ibey among oth­er play­ers at a gath­er­ing, af­ter that fate­ful day when the USA scored a soli­tary goal to end the Strike Squad’s reign 1-0 at a sold-out Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on No­vem­ber 19, 1989.

The re­sult led to the prover­bial riv­er of tears, but the ben­e­fits are still be­ing reaped in to­day’s foot­ball en­vi­ron­ment, as more than 90 per cent of the team are now im­part­ing their knowl­edge through coach­ing, and the coun­try con­tin­ues to bask in the glo­ry of an era of foot­ball that can match any oth­er the world over.

Coach Ever­ald “Gal­ly” Cum­mings, con­sid­ered one of this coun­try’s best coach­es, could not make it to the func­tion Sat­ur­day but was ho­n­oured by his play­ers. ‘Gal­ly’ was pre­sent­ed with a plaque and tro­phy ball by Charles, the man who scored the equalis­er in a 1-1 re­sult against the Amer­i­cans for a share of the points in the first meet­ing be­tween the teams in the qual­i­fiers in the USA.

Then man­ag­er of the team Neville Chance, in read­ing out com­ments from Cum­mings, said: “I am sor­ry I can­not be with you in per­son to cel­e­brate 34 years of to­geth­er­ness and love among mem­bers of the his­toric team. That word—to­geth­er­ness, I un­der­score, is very im­por­tant in the world to­day. You must have had some­thing very spe­cial to con­tin­ue to meet as a team and con­tin­ue to meet as a fam­i­ly and cre­ate an oc­ca­sion like this.

“This is in­deed the great­est feel­ing to be ho­n­oured by you and even a greater ho­n­our to see what you have done in your jour­ney, to see how you have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to sport and life in gen­er­al, this is an ex­tra­or­di­nary jour­ney,” Gal­ly said.

It was Gal­ly who in­tro­duced Kaiso­ca Soc­cer then and it tran­si­tioned to So­ca War­rior by so­ca artiste Max­imus Dan, who, not on­ly made an ap­pear­ance at the cer­e­mo­ny but en­ter­tained the gath­er­ing with a ren­di­tion of his songs.

Strike Squad team­mate Al­ibey, now a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, was re­spon­si­ble for host­ing the event. Be­fore that, he was the one play­er to cre­ate pan­ic in the US de­fence with his blind­ing speed, par­tic­u­lar­ly down the flanks.

The Strike Squad mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue their cel­e­bra­tion to­day with the hope that the So­ca War­riors will pull off a vic­to­ry over the USA tonight in a Na­tions League ‘A’ quar­ter­fi­nal match at the sta­di­um. The War­riors lost the first leg of the quar­ter­fi­nals 3-0 in Austin, Texas, last Thurs­day.