If 2009 is anything like what it's forecast to be-economically and socially-by those outside our government's burgeoning spin department, we'll be grateful for the considerable distraction of World Cup qualifying football.
More than anything else, including Carnival and cricket (especially with the West Indies continuing on the slide to irrelevance), a serious bid for a place in football's greatest showpiece has already proved its capacity to galvanise the country and sustain national fervour to the extent that we can feel really good about ourselves.
Some will argue sensibly that it is only a brief, felicitous respite from depressing reality, in the same way that some of the thousands celebrating the 3-0 defeat of Cuba on Wednesday night at the Hasely Crawford Stadium would have been returning home to continue the task of shovelling mud from their living rooms.
But with no sign on the horizon of any meaningful effort, either at the level of the citizenry or political directorate, to fundamentally address what appears to be a chronic malaise of indifference, neglect, complacency and outright lawlessness, we'll seek our solace wherever we can, even in the superficiality of big men running about in short pants kicking a ball around.
Not that success is guaranteed. Far from it.
In a CONCACAF final-round grouping that will also include Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador, it will be extremely difficult to finish in the top three for an automatic ticket to football's Big Yard. And even if we were to scramble a fourth-place finish, as four years ago, this time around the playoff will not be against a team from the Asian Zone but South America.
That's one aspect of the challenge. Another is that we continue to be notoriously slow starters, a reality that the final scoreline against the Cubans may mask on paper. It is unlikely that the top teams in our region will allow general lethargy, and especially slack defending, to go unpunished . We also have the age factor and considerations about the ability of our most senior and still very influential players being able to stay the course through ten games from February to November with their already hectic club commitments in between.
Then again, I'm always ultra-cautious to the point of outright pessimism, essentially preferring to prepare for the worst and therefore minimise the impact of what would be taken as crushing disappointment by those inclined to always look on the brighter side. That's why I didn't expect us to qualify for Germany '06, especially after the Ash Wednesday loss to the USA at the Queen's Park Oval, and was proved wrong nine months later in Bahrain.
Never before has there been such sustained nationwide rejoicing as after that 1-0 triumph in Manama. Yet, even if this campaign ultimately ends in dejection, rancour and recrimination, it will be a journey worth experiencing if only for the fact that, for a while at least, we will believe again that "Impossible is Nothing".
Going back to the "Road to Italy" effort in 1989, I don't know how many people who lived through those days from start to agonising finish are still wishing that the whole experience never happened.
Of course there was a deep feeling of betrayal over the whole stadium overcrowding scandal that probably caused more emotional damage than Paul Caligiuri's decisive goal on that sun-drenched November 19 afternoon. But as much as I resist the temptation to invest more energy and enthusiasm into successive World Cup qualifying campaigns following an injustice that was never reconciled, the prominent memories of that time are of the heady national sense of euphoria--that we were, despite our many differences, together as one on this journey to glory.
Okay, it didn't happen, and maybe it won't happen either next year. But until it is mathematically impossible, until the final whistle is blown on that absolute must-win game, so many of us will still have faith that Everest can be scaled again and are therefore prepared to risk falling off that precipice of unfounded optimism.
Could it be that the challenges of the economic readjustment 19 years ago made the World Cup qualifying campaign seem so much more important than it really was, if only as a shaft of light through the dark, foreboding clouds of gloom? Given the gathering storm that threatens to do much more long-term damage than Tuesday's thundershowers, we may again need the escape valve that no amount of wining before, during and after Carnival can provide.
It would not be Trinidad and Tobago without some sort of controversy along the way. And maybe at some point next year, when the vitriol is spewing from all corners, we'll almost wish that we hadn't gotten that far.
For now, though, those depressing prospects are far away, and with the CONCACAF final-round fixture list to be sorted out tomorrow in Johannesburg, we can take comfort in the reality that, unlike the rapid rail project that may fall victim to the anticipated economic downturn, the dream of South Africa 2010 is still on track.
Pele didn't call it the beautiful game for nothing.