Football is the most natural participatory sport in the world.
I was reminded of that yesterday when I watched 22 youngsters, many of whom would usually have their eyes and ears latched on to their smartphones, come to life in energy-sapping mid-morning heat as the coach blew the whistle to get their practice game underway at the Aranjuez Savannah.
Just one ball rolled on to the field of play and everyone was involved: from the self-proclaimed starboys trying to do everything on their own, to teammates running off the ball into the open spaces and bawling for the pass that never came, to defenders scampering to regain lost ground, to goalkeepers protecting their citadels before kick-starting the counter-attacks.
It’s not just the beautiful game, but the people’s game. No other team sport so easily incorporates everyone in the playing area. Certainly not cricket, where too many children waste too much time standing around in the field doing nothing while others bat and bowl. Not even basketball, because you need a hoop mounted on a backboard somewhere, unless you want to call it netball.
Anyway, the relevance of this recognition is in the context of Dexter Skeene’s assertion that this is the season in which the Digicel TT Pro League will be turning the corner to a new level of excellence in terms of organisation, outreach and, very importantly, quality of play.
As CEO of the League, the former national striker has always maintained a positive outlook, notwithstanding the array of naysayers, including many in the media. Yet on Friday’s Sporting Edition on TV6, Skeene was positively bursting with enthusiasm to the extent that you wondered if he was becoming intoxicated with his own public relations spin.
“Where before we had to go knocking constantly on people’s doors, now they are coming to us,” he noted, not with a tone of arrogance, but an appreciation that all of the hard work of more than 15 years is beginning to bear fruit through greater recognition and exposure.
Even if the prospect of Pro League games being carried on SportsMax has more to do with Digicel’s acquisition of the Jamaica-based regional cable sports network than a sudden spike in interest in the TTPL, it still represents a tremendous opportunity to showcase the League, not just the players, as a product deserving of a greater following.
It is one thing to establish a regional footprint for the competition. At the same time though, there is work to be done on the home front to build community loyalty, to have many of those young footballers in Aranjuez and environs identifying with San Juan Jabloteh in the same way that you would want those boys (and girls) playing the game in the deep south to claim Point Fortin Civic FC as their team.
Not that it will in any way diminish their obsession with, say Manchester United or Barcelona, but the Pro League has a readymade but so far almost untapped market of football-crazy youth in this country. Only a select few will ever make it to any serious level in the game. But the rest can become the diehard fans who will follow and support their team throughout the country with the same fervour and enthusiasm that was once the norm with football at all levels in Trinidad and Tobago.
That may sound decidedly unrealistic to those who only see mediocrity in anything produced here. But different times call for different strategies to build loyalty, to sow the seeds of identity with the team from the community.
Taking the Pro League to the communities is one thing, but it must be more than just a handful of fixtures at Brechin Castle and Ojoe Road and hoping that people turn up because the games are in their backyards.
There must be an overall marketing strategy, a strategy that identifies the clubs—and more specifically, the players—as being part of those communities, getting involved in school and social programmes that raise awareness and create a favourable impression of the club, and by extension, the League.
Obviously this is not something that happens overnight. It will require money, yes, but more importantly commitment from all concerned with the understanding that the benefits of the efforts now may not accrue for several years.
In an age when it is perceived that the social networks are the be-and-end-all of young people’s existence, thousands still put all of those addictive gadgets aside on Sunday mornings to play the game they love in open spaces across the length and breadth of this twin-island state.
That instinctive attraction to the most natural sport in all the world must be harnessed if Skeene’s expectations of the Digicel TT Pro League are to be fulfilled somewhere down the road.