It is said that sports have an ad­van­tage over lit­er­a­ture, song or cin­e­ma — it does not need words. The free flow of a Bri­an Lara cov­er dri­ve is ap­pre­ci­at­ed as much in Bar­rack­pore as in Bris­bane (Aus­tralia), the clever feints of Rus­sell Late­ly look as artis­tic in Port-of-Spain as it did in Por­to (Por­tu­gal).

Which is why when we watch the tru­ly great in sports, what we are ad­mir­ing and tak­ing pride in is not just the achieve­ment of a Trin­bag­on­ian or a West In­di­an, but the heights to which man’s con­scious­ness can rise.

I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty re­cent­ly to have a sit down with for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Sed­ley Joseph at his home in Val­sayn. Now 81 and un­der­go­ing dial­y­sis treat­ment, Sed­ley was a stand­out for Maple in the 1960s, lead­ing them to 28 tro­phies in nine years and was named T&T’s cap­tain of the cen­tu­ry.

He re­called his jour­ney in an ex­ten­sive in­ter­view that can be viewed on TTFA's Youtube page but what stood out for me was his rec­ol­lec­tion of what foot­ball was like dur­ing the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

We have all heard it said be­fore, "that sport is like re­li­gion and more so foot­ball in some coun­tries". Ac­cord­ing to Sed­ley, it was in fact so in the years gone by and he wants to see a re­turn of those times. The an­nu­al cy­cle of ma­jor foot­ball events such as the North/South Clas­sic and the Port-of-Spain League mim­ics the year­ly se­quence of rit­u­als by which tra­di­tion­al re­li­gions trans­form “pro­fane” time and space in­to “sa­cred” mo­ments and places. These were the scenes at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah back then, ac­cord­ing to Sed­ley who guid­ed T&T to a bronze medal at the 1967 CAC (Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean) Games.

"The ground was not the best in the world. In front of the Grand Stand par­tic­u­lar­ly when it rained on the left side, go­ing west was dif­fi­cult to play on. But it was what we had and we made use of it. All the teams had grounds on the Sa­van­nah. So you had Maple ground on the north, Malvern ground on the west, Dy­namos up the road, Colts on the East. Peo­ple used to go to see teams prac­tice as if it were a match," he said.

"The sup­port­ers would come to you af­ter prac­tice and say 'Hear nah Skip, this play­er should play and this one should be on the bench,' such was the in­ter­est that they had in sup­port­ing their teams. It was re­al­ly good in those days.

"I imag­ine there are still tal­ent­ed play­ers in the teams now. I don’t know if the ri­val­ry we had then, still hap­pens now. You had Malvern com­ing with most of the play­ers from Wood­brook, the Wood­brook Glam­our Boys, Colts from Bel­mont, Sham­rock with their club­house at Queen’s Park East and Ca­su­als by the cor­ner head­ing to­wards QRC (Queen's Roy­al Col­lege). The ten­sion was there.

"I could re­call rid­ing my bi­cy­cle head­ing to games from my home at Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street, East Dry Riv­er. If we were play­ing Colts that evening, you would have the Colts fans telling me on the way 'Sed­ley we go beat all ya this evening'. Spec­ta­tors didn’t make joke in those days. The sup­port was strong. When you reached the Sa­van­nah you knew you weren’t play­ing just for your club but al­so for your sup­port­ers.

“I grew up on the Sa­van­nah look­ing at the el­ders play. I grew up in that foot­ball at­mos­phere so it wasn’t dif­fi­cult for me to move on from be­ing a young­ster look­ing on from be­hind the goal post to be­ing in front of the goal post when I grew old­er," said Joseph, re­call­ing the as­sis­tance he re­ceived from his three broth­ers and sis­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly his broth­er Alan who skip­pered Maple in the 1950s and would take him to train­ing or match­es on his bi­cy­cle.

“I don’t know but I think the ca­ma­raderie we had in the 60s and 70s is what we need to get back. I can’t say for sure be­cause I am not that close enough to the teams these days. Al­though we played against each oth­er in the league on a week­end, we be­came friends when we had to play for North or South, or on the na­tion­al team. The ca­ma­raderie that we had was strong. We en­joyed each oth­er’s com­pa­ny.

"Mat­ter of fact, peo­ple won­dered how Carl­ton Fran­co and my­self were so close, Carl­ton was cap­tain of Malvern and I was cap­tain of Maple. The close­ness was al­ways there and there was no ques­tion of an­i­mos­i­ty. Of course, it was dif­fer­ent in the ac­tu­al games."

Clear­ly, most team sports elic­it a sanc­ti­ty be­tween the play­ers and their fans. Is sport a rit­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty? I be­lieve so. Sport can in­crease spir­i­tu­al aware­ness in so far as per­sons em­brac­ing the ten­sion be­tween suc­cess and fail­ure from mo­ment to mo­ment. In these times of ten­sion, sport no doubt is a far greater op­tion for us whether as a fan or a par­tic­i­pant. Well, once the lock down is over.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.