A SUCKER FOR SOCCER

Nov 22, 2010 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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It has been almost a year since I last visited Jamaica, and almost three years since I was in Montego Bay meeting with the aptly initialled, R.A. Stanford (RAS), and his entourage the day before Cricket World Cup 2007 was launched at the new stadium in Trelawny.
How could I have for so long resisted the temptation of a country where a festival is something you “heat” (as well as henjoy) and “bammy” does not refer to refreshingly temperate weather but a fried tropical flatbread made from cassava.  In other words, it is also something you “heat”.  And if your name is Patricia and they call you “Patty” for short – watch out.  You will be “heaten” with gusto and maybe a little pick-a-pepper.  Worse if you’re a jerk.  You, too, will feel the heat.
Even “bullahs” are eaten in Jamaica.  For those Caribbean people who equate the word with male homosexuality, the Jamaican bullah is a round gingerbread or bun, good with avocado and cheese.  As they say in Trinidad, “It goes down good.”
In Trinidad “bun” can also mean “exhausted” or “out of energy”.  As a young man, I played Sunday Morning football with friends who, like me, had spent the entire night out partying and then heading for the market for some hot “doubles”.  There is nothing hotter than the sun at midmorning when you have not slept the night before.  Worse, if you have enough the slightest hangover.
Worst of all is the combination of oil, pepper and curry sitting on your stomach like Andre the Giant.  The rum, curry and oil rise like a green mist from the swamp and eventually begin their acid reign.  It is then you go forward but cannot come back.  It is then that the opposing forwards go through your defence like a hot knife through butter.   It is then you “bun” both in the sun and in your endurance.  This is collapse-o- football at its best.
It is strange that even at my advancing age I am still a sucker for soccer.  It was not always so.  I spent my early life in a rural village where boys of East Indian descent were not allowed or encouraged, to play football.  It was “too rough”.  Good little boys played cricket and the rag-tag, ragamuffins played football.
But fate did not agree and when I went to school in the city my friends in the post-primary Sargasso Sea into which we had been cast until the College Exhibition results came out, were into football in a big way.  There were inter-school competitions and while, academically, the school did not do well, we could outkick, outcurse and outfight any and all comers.
Because of my sense of humour and my willingness to miss school whenever the humour was on me, the boys on the team told me to take the half-day off to watch them play.  I was game but was not sure how the teacher would react.  “Tell him you running a line,” one of the boys said.
I was completely lost.  I had no idea what he meant and guessed it might have something to do with plumbing or railroads but logic told me that I was missing something.  However, desire made me do it and I asked the teacher, Mr. Gordon, if I could leave class to go to the game since I had to run a line.  I suppose I was unconvincing.  Mr. Gordon pounced gleefully.  “What you running it with?”  I had no idea and saying a piece of pipe did not help either.  My friends added to my misery by laughing out loudly and calling me, for a few days, “pipe-man”.
A year later I moved to a town (Siparia) in the south of the island and lived next to what we called the “savannah” – a huge playing field that was like a sand-lot.  We called it the “sand-vannah” but it was home to many of us throughout the year.  After school, after work and on weekends this was where you would be sure to find us.
While the rest of the country enjoyed one dry and one wet season, we had a cricket season and a football season.  My embarrassment about not knowing enough about football caused me to read about it.  This has always been my way – whatever pursuit I intend to take up (and it goes for all of them), I start with a book.  This is my Karma and probably my Sutra as well.
When I passed my A-levels, I started teaching at a co-educational Secondary School very close to my home.  My youth, my love for sports, my enthusiasm for young people and my naiveté were exploited by the authorities and I was given responsibility for football, cricket, athletics, netball, drama, debating plus teaching.  Apart from having the present Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in my netball team, my only other joy was to develop a top-class football team from a very small base of about 100 boys.  Since then I have coached football teams in Trinidad and even in Canada while at school there.  Although I am passionate about cricket, I love football.  It is the glorious game.
Watching some young Jamaican kids being coached (courtesy ESPN) by professionals like Stern John takes me back to my evenings and weekends trying to get the youngsters from my neighbourhood to learn the rudiments of the game.  There were Shaka Hislop and Robbie Earle. It takes time, money and commitment, and any organization that invests in youngsters and sports is worth supporting.
My philosophy as a coach was that in any occupation you have to master the tools of your trade and in football the basic tool is the ball.  It is what inflamed us as a nation when we saw the film “GOAL” and were entranced by the magic of Pele and his fellow Brazilians.  They made the ball sing and dance the Samba for them.  That influence is greater in Caribbean football than it is in many other countries.
I tried to explain the “Soca Warriors” to a foreign friend.  He had thought that “Soca” was a misspelling of “Soccer”.  I told him it was music, a cross between Soul and Calypso and it characterized our approach to the game.  “Is it like the Brazilian Samba?” he asked.  “We have more soul,” I said.
But while Trinidad might have soul, Jamaica has Reggae.  Where Trinidad has “Soca Warriors”, Jamaica has its “Reggae Boyz”.  I watched the little kids in Trelawny all talented, all anxious, all eager, all good players, some potentially great.  As I watched them learn and laugh, sprint, dribble and jink, the pun came to me like a Bolt, not from the blue, but from Jamaica, and  I thought to myself, “Verily, boys will be Boyz”.
*  Tony Deyal was last seen wondering why the Trelawny football ground is shaped like a triangle.  One of the Boyz took a corner.

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