On the correct road to Germany

"We put ourselves in a fantastic position, and by completing the job tonight, we have a couple of games ahead of us and again I keep saying let’s not get ahead of our time..."

Dwight Yorke, 10.40pm 12/10/05

Our Soca Warriors’ skipper has led us in the most admirable fashion, proving from the outset what it took for us to get to this stage (two matches away from possible World Cup qualification). Back in February 2005 Dwight Yorke and the squad under St Clair took the "Soca" out of their original nickname, but only for their opening final stage match. The call from Jack Warner to drop Soca from "Soca Warriors" was heeded by the players — imagine, party animal Yorke sacrificed 2005 Carnival celebrations in Trinidad for Tobago-based training camp for our home clash with the US National Team. From that moment to this day Dwight has taken his fine footballing reputation to newer heights. In a dark era of leadership crisis in Trinidad, we’ve found a national leader who has managed to help gel a squad of superbly talented players into a team.

Hats off must go to St Clair for coaxing Yorke back into national colours and leaving us with that most valuable point against Costa Rica in his last match as coach. For me that was our most crucial game, in that Brian Lara’s motivational talk to the squad before the kickoff was followed by a most humble and hard fought battle on the field. Suddenly the "Warriors" found themselves. Subsequent to this, Yorke and Hislop’s insistence that St Clair’s replacement come in the form of Leo Beenhakker and not the alleged racist, Ron Atkinson, was the most crucial move that took us to the beginning of something very special. Not enough can be said about Russel Latapy’s timely intervention for our Guatemala home clash (again Yorke’s strategic intervention for the "Little Magician’s return must be underlined), and Beenhakker was finally given the crucial piece of the Trinbago puzzle to work with.

Then emerged the one element which seemed to have been laid dormant up until that historic Guatemala clash — finally the Soca returned (vibes it up!) And with it came the declaration from Beenhakker to the boys to play "their game" — and now amongst many great improvements in the team’s play, we’ve seen the arrival of a most formidable midfielder in the form of Aurtis Whitley coming our of his well played, yet somewhat restricted defensive role and leading attacking plays with the skill, tenacity and killer instinct that inspired the goals which won us the Mexico match.

The performance of all our players and fans was a revelation and deserves high praise. In the 90 minutes of play the Soca Warriors never stopped playing and the fans never stopped cheering despite a missed penalty and going on nil down. It is with great relief and admiration that the leadership style of our nation’s most internationally celebrated player, Dwight Yorke, has been in fact steeped in the virtues of humility, hard work and honesty.

Between now and November 12, Trinbago would not get caught up in an over exuberant display of "pride" and a "haughty spirit" — November 19, 1989 was our lesson learnt.

On the field that dreadful evening a seventeen-year old lived through the pain of not qualifying for the Italia ‘90 World Cup with us then — sixteen years wiser now, he leads us with the humility and self belief that brings out the best in Trinbagonians, which on any given day can see us conquer teams considered superior to ourselves.

Our Soca Warriors have the potential to add a few more to this list — with our continued support they have a very good chance of making it to "Germany 2006" — one game at a time. Let us continue to be there for them.

ANDRE STUART REYES

Mt Lambert