I'll never forget Fatima v John D: 1-2-3 (Peru's pain) Sept. 2003 Garth Wattley talks with Alan Anderson "Whilst we were at John D, we were given opportunities to gain self-respect, to gain self-confidence and to really go and become all what we want to be. And I think had it not been for John D, a lot of us would not have been known, in terms of football." Even today, Alan "Peru" Anderson is fighting for John Donaldson Technical Institute. Twenty-four years have passed since he last kicked a ball in the old Colleges Football League (CFL), and it is also approaching two decades since the technical institutesJohn D and San Fernandowere debarred from playing in the country's major schools competition. But their disappearance from the playing field, and their rapid declines as educational institutions, hurts "Peru". It hurts him bad, bad. "Because of the discontinuation of the technical institutes (in football)," he says to me, "you no longer have the stream of players with that kind of experience coming through the colleges and moving on to the zonal or national football." It was as if the man was mourning the death of a way out for those who needed it. "Too much accent was placed on winning and not enough was put on allowing players to develop," he says of the moveinitiated by the league's traditional school teamsto oust the technical outfits. "Luckily, the comprehensives were able to survive because of the numbers they had in terms of the (CFL) General Council." Anderson made the most of his John D chance, though. A decorated player at school, his vibrant play in central midfield earned him youth team caps and a ten-year career (1980-89) at senior level. And when his Trinidad and Tobago stint ended during that momentous 1990 World Cup qualifying campaign, the ex-Cocorite United and ASL player established himself in education as a finance and accounting teacher with the Wheeling Jesuit University abroad and with the Cipriani Labout College here. Now, he's the general manager of the Public Services Credit Union. Today, Anderson still takes a sweat as the manager-player of his old home town team, Cocorite. That is where it started for him. The talent that began to be honed there led to three treasured years in John D's maroon-and-white, where, first as solely player and then captain, "Peru" won a national League title (1979), a national Intercol winner's medal (1978) and at least two Barclay's knockout and North Intercol trophies. That was the seventiesthe age of Black Power, the fresh era of Soca music, and Olympic gold medal time for Hasely Crawford. Revolution and radicalism, then, were as vogue as hip-hop and weapons of mass destruction now. On the football field, the old order was being challenged too. Ian Clauzel, a Rastafarian schoolboy, was shaking the "Babylon" system with his dreadlocks and bewildering body beats, playing for Mucurapo Senior Comprehensive, one of the new wave schools in the land. As a son of the same generation, Anderson, like Clauzel, found himself having to win some hard battles. "I think for the first time, the traditional colleges were coming to terms with the (fact that) the technical schools were having a major say in the Colleges League." For both, the answer to the critics lay in the power of their play, like in that now legendary 1978 North Intercol final encounter at a teeming Queen's Park Oval in which "Dread Dribbler" Clauzel scored a wonder goal but ended up on the losing side, 2-1 Anderson still can't explain how his John D survived that "Compre" onslaught and managed their come-from-behind win. The atmosphere was electric, he tells me, his bespectacled face brightening at the memory. "I wish I could have bottled that atmosphere and carried it with me for the rest of my career." For him, though, the memories of the 1979 Intercol trilogy between John Donaldson and Fatima College are even more powerful, lasting, and painful. After an epic series of three matches, Fatima took the North Zone title, and went on to become national champions. More than one match was needed to separate the sides because of a decision taken by the League to replay the first matchwon 2-1 by John D at the Queen's Park Ovalbecause referee Alexander Rodney Adney had carried the game ten minutes over time in the first half. To this day, "Peru" cannot believe that decision. "It was political!" he insists. "So much so, that the referee, who I thought was the best referee, not only in the Colleges League, but in the country... after that game, he was thrown away! We lost a tremendous referee in that regard, albeit, they said he played that game over time... If at all they found him guilty, they could have dealt with him separate and apart from having to replay the game. There was no precedent for having replayed the game. So we felt we were punished." By Anderson's own ready admission, though, Fatima in '79 were a fine outfit. Giant defender Garnet Craig, and attackers Anton Corneal, Graeme Rodriguez and Kenwyn Nancoo were all worthy of being national champions. "They had a very, very good teamwell coached, well organised." But John D, fresh and highly-talented, were the glamour side. The teams of '76 and '77 had been rebuilt by coach Noel "Brigand" Gonsalves. But the '79 vintage was not short on quality. Many of them later served the senior team with varying degrees of distinction. "Our team was built around speed and control. We had a lot of speed along the flanks. We had Garfield De Silva and Christopher Pugh in the middle, together with Lester Parris, and in the back, we had Brent Cumberbatch and Clayton Morris." Backing all of them was another future national, goalkeeper Errol Lovell. Anderson seems to have special regard for Morris, the former "Strike Squad" skipper. "A lot was being said about Clayton Morris and his (lack of) height. And it was being said that he was too short to be a central defender. I think he proved all the critics wrong because he was able to establish himself as a reader of the game, a person who has a sure tackle and can go forward under tremendous control. I think that is when Trinidad became aware of Clayton Morris as a quality player." So sure was this bunch of their game, that defeat in the replay on St Mary's ground was hardly contemplated. "We felt sufficiently confident that if it is a replay they want, we going to give it to them, because it was said further that we (only) had a set of stars and we were not good," relates Anderson. "We had a score to settle and we wanted to do that publicly." But Fatima were not about to oblige. They gave their opponents a guard of honour at the start of the game, then went out and grabbed a 3-1 lead, only for desperate John D to storm back in the closing minutes and scramble a 3-3 draw. "That second game was a thriller, a thriller to the very end," Anderson says. "It was a real classic. "Both teams had a fair exchange of possession. We were moving the ball forward, wide and across, and we just couldn't get the ball in. We just couldn't get the ball in! Finally, each team got a goal. But it was the whole to-ing and fro-ing that caused that game to remain in the balance." Mainly through Lovell, John D managed to neutralise the aerial threat of Craig, who, according to Anderson, "was beating everybody on the cross ball with his aggression and accuracy with the header," throughout the season. But that did not stop Corneal, with a double, and Rodriguez from giving Fatima a 3-1 lead heading into the final minutes. It took De Silva's second goal of the match and a John Castillano effort, with virtually the game's last kick, to save the day. But a second chance and third match was not at all what Anderson and company wanted. "For some reason," he says, "our game in the second half kinda got away from us...Only because we had a very good defence we were able to hold them at bay. But...we really felt we missed an opportunity. It's just that Fatima were a little more determined and I think perhaps they may have felt that they too had a chance of making a statement." Fatima certainly made their point in the trilogy's final installment, winning 2-0. No excuses from "Peru". "We were flat. We really, really were flat, as though we did not show up to play the game." John D won the League and swept the same Fatima aside 5-0 on the way to also winning the Barclay's tournament. But that was not enough. "It was one of the games that we really left with some hard feelings," the man says of what was a "major disappointment" in his career. "It was a dream that was lost." Some revolutions just don't go full circle. |
Story and photos taken from the Trinidad Express. |
