Never had the privilege of seeing Everald "Gally" Cummings play. But I cannot imagine that he would have been a lazy player. I would guess he was the type who always wanted the ball, always wanted to be in the play.
The Gally that I have come to know over the years has always wanted to give his two, three cents to conversations about what direction local football should be headed to. He is still so.
Friday last was the first time in many a year that I had seen or spoken to the former standout national player, Strike Squad coach and as, he reminded me, national team technical director.
The Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs, in conjunction with an organisation called SanKofa HP, was hosting a Caribbean Sport Psychology Conference at the Hyatt. Cummings was one of the participants and at times, as I was told, the subject of discussion. But what drew me to the waterfront was something else. It was curiosity.
Much time had passed--13 months and 14 days since he had written to the Equal Opportunities Commission with complaints of discrimination and victimisation on the part of his former employers, the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation and their special adviser Jack Warner.
No word of any kind has come from the authorities thus far. So I was curious about what was going on in the mind of "Gally".
What was he thinking now? What was he feeling?
The answer to the latter was, hurt.
"Very much so because I've contributed to football all my life," he said.
"What hurt me the most is to see the slide in football. With certain people around the game who care, it makes a difference. But sometimes, I don't feel people care. If we care we would do something about it."
It would be an understatement to say G. Cummings is frustrated by what he sees as his ostracism from the national football scene. And he is convinced that it is deliberate. He gives instances to support his claim. He seems to have a case. But...
These days, Cummings is employed–by the University of Trinidad and Tobago. He runs their football programme. Maybe it is just time to move on, good case or not.
He would argue, however, that move on is exactly what he would like to do--but with the TTFF.
It is as if, even after his momentous 1988-89 stint and his roles as technical director/coach between 1994 and 1997, that Gally still feels he has unfinished business to deal with.
As we talk, ideas keep coming about how to improve the game here, like introducing a league to bridge the gap between secondary schools and senior club level because the T&T Pro League's youth league "doesn't cut it".
This is a man with a very strong sense of personal pride who jealously guards his values.
Hear him: "Most people in Trinidad know my situation with the football association, you know, but it's not happening to them. And what we do, we wait until the thing get bad and then we start to talk. I think what we need to do now is to start to straighten everything out in this country and make people live up to their word and people in leadership positions, make sure that they don't be victimising people.
"When I speak, I'm not talking for me alone, it's happening across the board in this country."
But it is his conviction about how T&T teams should play that still makes his a compelling voice.
"I am not interested in coaching no national team," he tells me. "I'm interested in making sure that when our young people come to the national team, they come with an identity and a sense of self worth."
To use a sometimes vague word, Gally wants to see local football rooted in T&T "culture".
"It is nothing to do with instilling it," he says, "it's there already!
"When I coach any youngster in Trinidad, I don't take out the natural rhythm, I leave that. What I ask them is to be more creative and play football in a smart way.
"I feel if is anybody to guide that is me, because I've been the only one brave enough to play that kind of football."
He says this philosophy is not about tactics.
"Tactics is relative. A coach can use his own tactics. I'm talking about their style, the things you do. Once people take that away from you, you know what they do? They take away your identity..."
And Cummings is unapologetic in his insistence that a local philosophy must drive the football programmes.
"We cannot play better than an Englishman trying to be an Englishman but we can play better than an Englishman as a Trinidadian," he makes the point.
"...This is why the Strike Squad remained in people's minds, because players were allowed to be creative...within the context of team play.
"But what we have done, we brought a German coach (Otto Pfister); we have the Dutch training our coaches for them now to train our players the Dutch way. We have a Norwegian coach (Even Pellerud) with the ladies and then we have a Yugoslav who just finished with our Under-20s, which is (Zoran) Vranes.
So what you find now, if we adopt this style, down the road we gonna have problems, serious problems because you cannot train somebody in their own country and leave out their cultural traits, their rhythms, their music whether it is the steelband the calypso, the tassa whatever. That is our strength."
Gally goes on: "Once you don't have a structure in place, you wasting time with a head coach of a senior team. Once you don't have a foundation, you could build a house from the top down? That's what we trying to do and you can't do it. The foundation is our culture and our style of football."
Twenty-two years on from the Strike Squad and 1989, the message is still not getting through.