Well done Warriors

From the first session that was conducted by Beenhakker I was impressed by his authoritativeness, knowledge and sheer mannerism.

They guys had made a good choice and their success to date is because of his stewardship.

Unfortunately there were local negative forces such as a former national skipper who claimed we should think about South Africa and not Germany, also a former national coach from the deep south constantly attacking foreign expertise when he failed miserably and has nothing to show.

The few instances that the quality of our football improved were because of foreign input. Some of us may have forgotten people like Americo Brunner who turned St Benedicts into a wonder team that helped to produce one of the finest footballers that this country has ever produced: Mr Leroy De Leon.

By virtue of this, the southland at one time possessed the cream of the crop and chose to use young college players for the North/South Classic and was rewarded with a five to nil thrashing of North. The headline on the newspaper the next day stated “Archie Buck Dem Up” due to the performance of Warren Archibald and others.

The success of the 1973/74 team who were blatantly robbed in Haiti; a foreign coach by the name of Kevin Verity was at the helm, although I would admit that this team was full of quality.

Somehow the players of that era and the Strike Squad never fully supported the success of this present team.

They always felt that it should have been them and not this present crop of players.

The Strike Squad is living with a permanent tabanca, it shows in their utterances and body language.

They have only themselves to blame, just a draw at home but they failed and up to now they seek self pity.

I never felt that this team would make it to the second round but what I knew for sure was that they were not going to be bobolee at the World Cup; I knew that they were going to give a good account of themselves because they had matured into a sound unit.

The foul committed on Sancho was a professional one, only people who never played the game would grumble.

On the field of play, every minute some sort of pulling, tugging, pushing and hunching happens, at times the officials may see or not see.

A lot of things happen off the ball and the referee doesn’t see but the game goes on.

Our performance at the World Cup was exceptional; it was unfortunate that Cornel Glenn had to be substituted so early in the game due to a bad fall.

He certainly looked like he would score at any time; I would have gone for Jason Scotland but the coach opted for Evans Wise.

I felt Stern John should have been man enough to go to the bench and ask Leo to replace him only because Leo believed in him and his ability to score goals.

As a striker you have three options. Either you use your speed or wit and if that doesn’t work, you loaf around the box and make off-side runs with the hope of slipping one in without the officials seeing and that did not happen; as a player you know when you are washed up and cannot cope so one should be honest and let the technical staff know but most of us are selfish.

Stern is the most prolific scorer on the team but recently he has passed his best; in my opinion he should not have started in any of the games in Germany, when there was young blood like Cornel Glenn, Kenwyne Jones, Collin Samuel, Jason Scotland and Anthony Wolfe.

All in all, it was a splendid performance as a first-timer and the little magician played his part at the right time, his body language after the game expressed a feeling of joy and not a case of “yuh should have brought me on before.”

He is easily the most influential player on the team but his age and legs were against him.

Thanks to Theobald for saving a sure goal and Hislop for some fantastic saves, the coach had to use Jack at some time since he went into the tournament as the first call and brought off a miraculous save very early in the game, but people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Well done Soca Warriors.