Phillips’ book an honest read

Phillips shares his “footballing” life from the days as a nine-year-old sports fanatic going to the Queen’s Park Savannah with his big brother to watch fiercely contested First Division football matches when his hero Hugh Sealy “The Black Panther” kept goal for the dreaded Maple team, dressed all in black, to his involvement in the sport as “Coach” of the Lincoln Phillips Soccer School in the United States.

The first chapter sets the tone for the 200-page book, as Phillips describes life as a child in the streets of St James when all he wanted was “to be like Panther.” To the extent that his mother, Anita, who cleaned house for the wealthy Siegert family of the rum-distilling dynasty, and pressed sheets for Chinese clients, boiled a flour bag until the writing dissolved, stitched the bag into a pair of shorts and along with a long -sleeved white shirt - dunks them all in darkest dye. “Dressed in black socks, black shorts, black shirt, with a pair of socks pulled over my hands as gloves (also black, of course) I prance around the Woodbrook Youth Centre….Until it starts to rain. The puddle beneath me blackens, and my shorts are nothing but a flour bag once again.”

That then was the day Phillips, who went on to achieving sporting accolades too numerous to list here, played his first big football match saving for St Crispin’s primary school “looking as sharp as The Panther until the rain came down and washed the illusion away.” Most of us will remember Phillips in the Queen’s Royal College Intercol goal, but he also made lasting impact playing the Intercol cricket final of 1959 for QRC, after which he was awarded a special prize by the Principal for sporting conduct, having truthfully pointed out to his captain that what appeared to be a catch he had taken was a bounced ball and the opposing batsman was called back to resume his knock.

The name “Tiger” came when Phillips moved on as goalkeeper for first division Maple at age 19; then it was the lure of the newly formed Trinidad and Tobago Regiment with the promise of being sent to England to study physical training to instruct fellow soldiers on his return, as the Regiment was starting football, basketball, cricket and field hockey. “The Regiment” says Phillips “plundered the best footballers in the country from the first division clubs as no other club could offer a job as well.” By this time Phillips was courting Linda D’Andrade and on April 18, 1965 wearing his white army dress-uniform exchanged vows with her at Holy Rosary Church. They now have four grown sons and six grandchildren..At the end of his book, Phillips pays her tribute saying “I owe it all to my wife, Linda Felicia.”

In 1963 Phillips wore national colours for the first time on a tour to Suriname. In 1966 the Regiment sent him to England for Physical Training Instruction (PTI) and in 1967 he was between the uprights when the national football team won its only bronze medal at the hemispheric Pan Am Games in Winnipeg, Canada.

He was only 27 years when a scout, Derek Tomkinson, for an American pro-soccer team was so impressed with his “second-half saves” in a game between his team the Regiment and Malvern in a FA semi-final at the Queen’s Park Oval, that he immediately wanted to sign Phillips to the Baltimore Bays for the 1968 season in the fledgling North American Soccer League. Phillips, a Sargeant in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment, was about to serve the sixth and final year of his Regiment contract. Once Tomkinson guaranteed that the Bays would pay for his continued education, and his wife agreed, relatively certain he would go, Phillips signed a one-year contract for US$47,000, which sounded like a lot of money until he arrived in the States.

In 2004, Phillips reminisces, “From a shack in St James, Trinidad, I’d travelled further than I could ever have dreamed, I’d spent almost 40 years in the United States, playing professional soccer and coaching everyone from the physically disabled to the best college team in the country.

I had plumbed the depths of despair, and celebrated triumph. Now in 2004 it was time to go back home…..I had no delusions. I was hopeful, yes, but clear-eyed. I had been looking for an opportunity to play a role in Trinidad and Tobago football for years; it had just never worked out. Until Jack Warner came knocking.”

Two very informative and honestly written chapters tell the story of Warner’s invitation to Phillips to work with the national team in an effort to qualify for the World Cup in Germany 2006, after which Phillips continued as Technical Director. This ended when “The T&TFF administration had systematically dismantled my duties in order to get rid of me. I was technical director in name alone.” By 2009, after an incident involving a ‘misunderstanding’ with the mystery of a quarter-million dollar invoice, Phillips received a termination letter from the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation although Warner had said to him that the whole misunderstanding would be dealt with. “Ït was not,” says Phillips. “And On May 25, 2009, after six tumultuous years in Trinidad, we were returning to Maryland.”

Phillips, now a corporate-level motivational speaker writes, “Everywhere I’ve gone in the United States - Howard University, Gaithersburg, Batimore - American football has been king. But I’ve lived to see soccer hustle its way to a position of some respectability. I like to believe that I’ve played some small role in helping the sport to the fore.”

Lincoln Abraham Phillips, given the names of an American President because of the date of his birth - July 4 1941, holds a Master’s Degree in Physical Education; is mentioned in the Guiness Book of Records as playing the most consecutive soccer games in 1969 without giving up a goal; is the 1965 Player of the Year for basketball and football at the then local WITCO Sports Awards; was inducted into the National Sporting Hall of Fame by the late President Noor Hassanali; and as recently as 2012 was inducted into the Maryland Soccer Hall of Fame as a coach.
“The sport has taken me above and beyond the crossbar.”