Ash Wednesday football

THE EDITOR: In 1989, when TT played against the USA in a World Cup qualifying football game, TT lost. It has been suggested that the conditions under which the local team was transported to their slaughter — a long bus ride, stopping to sign autographs, an incident at a gas station — added to the inevitability of their loss. The American football team was driven a distance of less than two miles from their downtown hotel to the National Stadium where the game was played.

Team USA was psychologically much better prepared than the star-studded TT team. Are we going to witness a repeat of that treatment to the local team in 2005? Will the team “fly” into the country half-an-hour before the qualifying World Cup game on Ash Wednesday? Will our footballers be psychologically fit to perform at their best on Ash Wednesday? Having deliberately shot ourselves in both feet (football and Carnival), the result of the Ash Wednesday game could be of historic proportions.

Henry Harper
Petit Valley