We must give Jack his jacket

The legend’s visage smiles down on him not from posters and T-shirts. This man does not have a back on the mend and hair that has not gone silver on all sides as yet.

The hagiography of Austin Jack Warner, with its heavy helpings of solemnly told tales about humility and an ascetic work ethic, always has masked the reality of Warner — obscured his worries, his fierce pride, his boyish appetites to test himself in contests rough and rougher, his compulsion to win, his zeal for control, his quirks and excesses — as if the glimpse of any of these traits might undermine our apotheosis of him.

Sometimes now you feel the urgency in his pauses and the way he clarifies and reclarifies the condition of football, as if, against his nature, adversity is peeling back his layers and allowing a glimpse inside.

There are days when his eyes narrow and he sighs hard and his head swivels toward an empty spring training diamond and it is easy to see clear to that fierceness at his core.

Jack Warner is passionate about football more than life itself, he has been haunted for over 16 years by the spectre of the 1989 ticket fiasco, but believes he has wrongfully been crucified because Trinidad and Tobago lost to the United States.

He does not make much effort to hide his thoughts, dreams or resentments any longer; his yearning to one day control the team outright and remould an organisation that he believes has lost its way has perhaps dissipated with age.

His conflicted feelings over how the frequently changing governments alternately treated him and his family; his zest to teach structure to his kids the way his family taught it to him; his desire not to lose control over his life like so many aged administrators; his enduring belief in the athletic prowess of our sportsmen; his determination to rise yet again from societal problems and prove he is young at a 60 odd, no 60 years and ten months now.

He came in with Havelange. He can hear time ticking now on his becoming the next FIFA President

He seldom permits himself public expressions of worry. Some of this is inscribed in his genetic code.

Even more than reflexes, what a great administrator loses late in his life is control — over his body, over his dominion, over prerogatives and privileges that once felt like his forever but, in truth, were always tenuous, tied on his on-field supremacy.

He is unaccustomed to uncertainty. It is part of his low-key charm that this doesn’t sound like a boast, merely a request that the cynics wait before pouncing, and a suggestion that his prospects are high if Trinidad and Tobago qualify at last for the World Cup.

He is a rabid competitor not above discreetly gloating, and he has a long memory when it involves observers who have questioned either his tactics or his disinclination to listen, even his style, when he was the only one investing money in football.

Warner begs to differ over opinions that he has made millions from football, so he owes the country more than that, instead he states, he spent his money on Trinidad and Tobago’s football and there is nothing to disprove that.

He issues challenges often not only to his staff, but to the media, where he has gone from public enemy number one, to someone people finally admit has contributed to the progress of Trinidad and Tobago’s football and ultimately the Caribbean’s growth on the world map.

He does not have an athlete’s physique but a litigator’s mind-set, heavy on logic, keen to rhetorical openings, bent on winning the point. Even talking offers the chance of competition.

Questioned on how he would like to be remembered, he falls silent. For a moment, the office is quiet as a morgue. He sees the risks ahead (as Trinidad and Tobago is on the verge of World Cup qualification in a two-leg play off with Bahrain) to his status and legacy and does not care.

This he says is bigger than Jack Warner.

And he is correct. Today, this country will be one again, and sports will unlike politicians unite every single person.

This is Jack Warner’s legacy, he has done it before on November 19, but this time we are all hoping for multiple happy endings.

By the way, did I hear Jack Warner say after this, he will concentrate on his career in politics?

Maybe he likes to suffer and adore punishment, because that is a thankless job and deservedly so at times. Thank you, Jack Warner, we may not always agree, but without your assistance, neither the coach nor some of the players (Dwight Yorke and Russell Lately in particular) would be on the field today.

When you are wrong , you are wrong, but when something is right, let us give him/her credit.