The black and white photograph sits timeless in my photo album. It shows a team of gangly youth. The players look westward towards the horizon. Behind them stands a cinder block wall. In the distance, mountains loom large, like giant hedges protecting the players’ backs.
This was the Montserrat national under 19 soccer team. Circa 1978. I was 16. In the front row, I crouched low and squinted against the afternoon sun. The players standing behind me were boyhood friends: Oscar, the star striker who could dribble through a school yard of rampaging boys. Norman, the left footed striker and midfielder. Dwight, the goalkeeper. And his brother Gershom, a striker. Their father was a Seventh Day Adventist minister so Saturday games were off limits.
Eddy was the right winger. His skill was to work the ball down the right side of the field and cross it over in front of the goal, where one of the forwards would either head or kick one time into the goal. I was the right midfielder. Eddy and I were an inseparable tandem. We worked the one-two, the give and go, like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, with feet instead of hands.
It was almost psychic. Without looking for Eddy, I sent passes into his speeding path. Opponents took to calling us hyphenated: Eddy and Andrew in one breath. That’s how quickly we zipped through defenses. We played domestic league football on a team made up of students from the island’s only high school, our teachers - Peace Corps volunteers and the British equivalent - and employees from Higgs & Hill, the international building contractor that constructed the pier at the harbor. We were a lethal mix of old and young, black and white, skinny and brawny.
As we raced up and down those hard-baked fields, the youth players dreamed of international soccer glory. But those illusions were dashed each summer as our national youth team was thrashed in the regional competition. It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Half of our summer vacation was dedicated to two-a day practices. As each day dawned, my coach and teammates woke me with a knock on my louvered windows so we could jog three miles to the park.
In 1978, as in the years before and after that, our endeavors proved fruitless. Undersized and overmatched, heart and energy were no answer to our man-sized opponents, who were mature enough to grow beards. But the results didn’t matter. We danced and cheered partied afterward. Desire, friendship and a game of soccer on a tropical Sunday afternoon.
I loved soccer before I loved girls. I grew up with cricket but soccer conspired to steal my heart early. One afternoon after Sunday school, I walked to the park to watch a league game. Arrived early. One team was a few players short. They scoured the sidelines for scrubs to make up the numbers. Somebody heard I was good, so they selected me. But I was ill-prepared to play. My t-shirt was fine, but my bell bottom pants and imported English shoes were not soccer wear. Undeterred I dashed on to the field. Somewhere, somehow, the ball fell at my feet and I smashed it into the net. Exhilaration. Triumphant. Goooooal! I was hooked. I was a soccer prodigy. I was going to be a star.
That was a long way from kicking a deflated netball barefooted on asphalt in front of my home in Jubilee, the small village on Montserrat, the Caribbean island where I grew up. Kicking with toes meant unkind collisions between skin and gravel. Games often ended in blood and sweat but never tears. Those are the ingredients of soccer dreams. For many of the players competing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, that is where their soccer dreams usually begin.
I even dreamed of migrating to England to play soccer professionally. But eventually, reality intervened. I settled for the mundane; I became a government civil servant.
But I got lucky.
I discovered journalism by writing about soccer. From early on though, I vowed never to be a sportswriter. I wanted to go to the games to cheer on my team. I would always be a fan.
Soon my fandom becomes the ultimate fantasy. My soccer journey will take me from Jubilee to Johannesburg, the scene of the 2010 World Cup.
I will be a fan of the game and a journalist at the event. I will have the best of both worlds. I
