“Just look at what we can do when we come to­geth­er, this is Eng­land in 2020,” Mar­cus Rash­ford tweet­ed up­on the news that his cam­paign had borne fruit. A cam­paign that prompt­ed a Gov­ern­ment U-turn that will now al­low par­ents to re­ceive vouch­ers for 1.3 mil­lion kids in Eng­land over the sum­mer and with more to come.

This was just an­oth­er ex­cep­tion­al ex­am­ple of the in­flu­ence, pow­er and re­spect that high-pro­file sports­peo­ple in gen­er­al whether it be foot­ball, crick­et or ath­let­ic stars can have on im­pact­ing mas­sive change in our world by mak­ing prop­er use of their plat­forms to reach the mass­es.

How much are we see­ing this in our re­gion or our coun­try? If it takes you more than thir­ty sec­onds to re­spond pos­i­tive­ly then it’s not hap­pen­ing enough or even at all.

The UK Guardian stat­ed: “In forc­ing the prime min­is­ter in­to a hasty spin of the heels, Rash­ford has de­liv­ered a time­ly re­minder that foot­ball’s in­flu­ence and cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy stretch well be­yond its own bor­ders. And by reach­ing be­yond those bor­ders in an ur­gent and worth­while cause, he has demon­strat­ed the pow­er of com­mon re­solve and com­mon pur­pose, at a time when – as he him­self put it – so­ci­ety “ap­pears to be more di­vid­ed than ever”.

Is it that our sport­ing and cul­tur­al stal­warts and he­roes aren’t be­ing seen in the kind of light by our lead­ers to have the sort of im­pact sim­i­lar to Rash­ford’s?

“The ge­nius of Rash­ford’s cam­paign was its sim­plic­i­ty. It was text­book in its strat­e­gy, tac­tics and ex­e­cu­tion. It starts with a clear po­si­tion­ing based on his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence: no one can ques­tion his mo­tive or ac­cuse him of jump­ing on a band­wag­on.”

Like Rash­ford, for­mer Grena­di­an in­ter­na­tion­al Ja­son Roberts, now di­rec­tor of de­vel­op­ment at CON­CA­CAF, al­so re­ceived an MBE for his char­i­ta­ble work in Grena­da. Roberts was award­ed the ho­n­our by the Queen af­ter he set up a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion to in­tro­duce chil­dren in Grena­da, the home­land of his fa­ther, and the UK to ed­u­ca­tion through sport and help build con­fi­dence. He took the de­ci­sion to play for Grena­da, rather than be se­lect­ed for Eng­land, in a bid to help Grena­da's youth.

He said: “For me, play­ing for Grena­da was more than foot­ball - it was the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go there and tack­le is­sues like get­ting kids in­to ed­u­ca­tion and main­stream so­ci­ety.”

Our so­ci­ety is yearn­ing for more like these men who can emerge as one of the un­like­ly, uni­fy­ing he­roes of the pan­dem­ic. As Rash­ford him­self said: "It's be­com­ing more nor­mal that peo­ple speak out on top­ics that they be­lieve in and I think it's just pos­i­tive for the fu­ture." Per­haps we have per­sons in our part of the world who maybe need to speak up some more for it to re­al­ly reach those who are in de­ci­sion mak­ing po­si­tions.

Over time the off-field con­tri­bu­tions of sport­ing ath­letes, such as by con­tribut­ing to char­i­ties or vir­tu­ous so­cial caus­es, are rarely the sub­ject of ma­jor me­dia dis­cus­sion. But there are most times much more pub­lic in­ter­est should an ath­lete present a dis­sent­ing per­spec­tive in re­spect of a so­ciopo­lit­i­cal is­sue via sport.

Neg­a­tive re­frains typ­i­cal­ly in­clude: ath­letes should “stick to sport”; that they are “us­ing sport” to ad­vance a po­lit­i­cal agen­da; and (like oth­er celebri­ties) they are not cred­i­ble ad­vo­cates be­cause they live in an elit­ist “bub­ble”. But times seem to be chang­ing. Cer­tain­ly How, why and when in­flu­en­tial ath­letes take a stand on so­ciopo­lit­i­cal is­sues is a ques­tion of tim­ing, con­text, pur­pose and strat­e­gy.

There can, of course, be a sub­stan­tial pub­lic back­lash as was the case when NLF star Col­in Kaeper­nick de­clined to stand for the na­tion­al an­them be­cause of what he sees as sys­temic racism in Amer­i­can so­ci­ety When NFL rat­ings fell this sea­son, some sug­gest­ed that Kaeper­nick’s politi­cis­ing of the game had prompt­ed dis­af­fec­tion. Of course, we must al­so re­spect the in­di­vid­ual's hon­esty when not want­i­ng to get in­volved be­cause of a lack of knowl­edge on an is­sue. Pres­sur­ing an ‘in­flu­encer’ may not be an op­tion as it would be bet­ter for them to com­ment or ex­pose an is­sue on their terms and not the pub­lic's own.

Mean­time, I am cur­rent­ly re­search­ing in­stances where our lo­cal sport­ing he­roes were se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered by our lead­ers when it came to sol­id de­ci­sions that im­pact­ed our cit­i­zens. This does not in­clude their in­di­vid­ual char­i­ta­ble work. Send me an email with any­thing you've come up with at shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com. Let me know al­so of any un­sanc­tioned wa­ter­sport events com­ing up at Buc­coo Reef or the Ca­roni Swamp as I may now have to speak up against that.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

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.