Looking pretty in 'vaps' country

June 18, 2001

Everything is supposed to happen here by "vaps". We do not belong to a culture in which people seem readily to comprehend "planning" and scientific preparation. As a result of this failing we tend never to see the process, the inter-linking stages, that is involved in accomplishing or building anything.

All the significant positives that have happened here tend to have happened not because of our social planning, our leadership and our managerial acumen, but in spite of us. Usually such positives can be attributed to foreign variables, inadvertent, mindless action on our part or the doing of some brave individual or individuals straining against the grain, against the usual swing of things.

The worse crime is that we never seem to reward anyone who, through sheer divergent thinking and "balls", attempt successfully to institute serious planning processes. Such persons this society, this culture, seems always willing to betray and destroy.

The corollary to all of this is that "talent" is viewed as the genuine, authentic article or item, the real McCoy, the divine gift, so to speak, only if its manifestation comes without rehearsal and without any appearance of labouring. To labour to accomplish any task or to rehearse painstakingly to hone skills and to develop and deepen capacity to perform is viewed traditionally with suspicion and even treated with comic harshness.

"Shit-hound!" "Shit-hound!" are the taunts usually hurled at anyone indulging in rigorous training or practice. One must be a "natural", one must be able to perform "just so". The only ideal seems to be improvisation on the spur of the moment.

The real king is the king of extempore. Oratory must be speech off the cuff without substantive notes, in other words "shooting from the hip" and looking "pretty" while doing so. To labour and to sweat, you see, is, apparently, not an ideal. How strange for the progeny of slavery and indentureship!

What do we really cherish? When it was reported, truly or not, that a local cricketer "drink rum fuh so that night and the next day beat Wes Hall all over the Oval", that became popular folklore throughout the country because as it was said though he did not make a ton of runs, he looked pretty in execution.

Similarly with the 16 runs that Lawrence Rowe made at that very Oval. In the rumshops throughout the country there are still people who can relate how those 16 runs were scored, ball by ball, stroke by stroke. They say it was worth all the money spent to get there.

In the same way there was/is always somebody who never studied, never sweat, never laboured but got CXC distinctions. It is clear from the folklore what we truly value.

Why, then, are we surprised when our star footballers like Dwight Yorke, Latapy, Rougier, etc do not show for practice and friendly games on the flimsiest of excuses as we try to prepare for World Cup qualifications? Why? A brief look at the experiences of some of our well know professional footballers surely paints the picture.

One went to East Fife in Scotland for trials. The East Fife coach, on seeing the potential of this individual over a few days, confessed to the press there that he had in fact "seen the next Maradona". After six months of trying to deal with that individual, the very coach would have nothing to do with him. What brought this change of opinion?

Yorke himself would score 25 goals in one season for Manchester United and help them win not only the English Premier League but also the European Cup, only to find himself benched most of the following season. What have been the factors that have led to such an unfortunate turn around?

Yorke may try to lay the blame on distraction due to his commitment to the T&T national team. But everyone can see that the distraction is elsewhere and of a different nature.

Clint Marcelle took Barnsley to the Premiership from First Division in the 1996-97 season, scoring eight goals in the process and became a hero of that English community. Then for some unknown reason, he suddenly fell from grace the very next season and ended up on the selling block. Why? Why could he not raise his game at the Premiership level?

Latapy's recent unfortunate experience at Hibernian is also another case in point and though the vindictiveness of the manager and captain has to be factored in, yet his general lack of fitness in recent times has to be considered.

Fitness comes with practice and rigorous training, the very aspect of athleticism that we seem to abhor. We have never understood, like the Michael Jordans of this world do, that to be a professional sportsman or athlete one has to be fit at all times, which translates into a constant regimen of training as a way of life.

That is why Don Quarrie of Jamaica could have lasted so long as a professional athlete of international repute, something no Trinidadian has been able to accomplish.

Brian Lara would do well to note this. He allows his fitness to go to the dogs after every Test series and then tries to become fit in the course and in the midst of the following series; hence the reason he only begins to make runs at the very end of each period.

A sportsman who is not fit cannot think in the course of his game and therefore cannot function intelligently. Of our professional footballers only the following maintain fitness as a matter of course: Eve, Elcock, Lawrence, Rougier, Andrews (Dog), Mauge and Carrington, while the rest merely seem to string along. People like Yorke and Latapy have to get fit or be benched until they do, regardless of public pressure.

It is time to get serious, to forget about looking pretty and about natural improvisation and insist on practice and training as the key to take all our games to the highest level.