Pierre honours Roach for Pro League goals

The presentation was made outside the Pro League’s head office in St Augustine.

Speaking to Newsday yesterday, Pierre who has honoured past Golden Boot winners such as Defence Force’s Devorn Jorsling (3-time winner), Marcus Joseph (Point Fortin Civic) and Makesi Lewis of Police FC, said he will continue this trend to motivate others to score as it is an area he feels is lacking nationally.

“We don’t have finishers. The goals are important and we’re missing goals. It’s an encouragement for players to start scoring... I ain’t finish this, I will continue doing this.

This is the reason why I’m so enthusiastic about (forming) the Players Association so if I pass away, instructions would be left that this is one thing that must be done to honour the top goalscorers in the season,” he said.

Pierre added, “I’m looking forward to this (new) season because it’s going to be longer from May to December so they should score the 30 goals I’ve been asking for which will be $10,000. Right now is 12 goals he (Roach) score, last year was 20 (Lewis scored). It’s a problem with the goalscoring and you see it with the national team.

You need prolific goalscorers on the national team. The only people scoring is Joevin Jones and (Kevin) Molino.” Pierre believes a proper video archive of local games needs to be set-up to not only remember the greats but to give the younger generation something to learn from. He said he is always keen to add to his personal library and providing Roach with copies from his stash was part of him recognising his achievement.

“Most of them youths never see (Russell) Latapy and (Dwight) Yorke and the Strike squad. The other (DVD i gave him) is the legends like Pele and their story. Here we don’t have footage of the past players and the youngsters only watching international players.

Right now there are two (videos) I’m trying to get - the (World Cup qualifying) game in 1974 when we got robbed from Haiti and videos of Bert Neptune from the Army.” Meanwhile, Roach thanked Pierre profusely for recognising his feat and is looking forward to scoring more goals.

“I feel good that he could, out of his goodness, come and give me a reward. I feel happy that somebody looking out for me,” he said.

Asked if Golden Boot was a goal going into the season or something that just transpired, Roach said: “It was a target because I was the youngest striker in the league and that was my aim.

The season was good for me. My team-mates were pushing me to the limit and we were playing as a team and they were giving me balls to score.”