Ad­ver­si­ty can ei­ther breed suc­cess or in­crease fail­ure!

Life is about chal­lenges and ac­cept­ing that on oc­ca­sions, your faith will be test­ed and your com­mit­ment ques­tioned by every­one, in­clud­ing those that clos­est to you.

In sports, which are a re­flec­tion of life, there con­stant­ly ex­ists that tur­moil of both mind and body.

In Spain over the last week, I wit­nessed a young group of men rep­re­sent­ing their coun­try first in all of their ac­tions and the ef­fort that was dis­played in some dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances should not go un­no­ticed.

De­spite the abysmal ef­forts of the Span­ish of­fi­cials hired by Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates man­age­ment team to en­sure that the T&T foot­ball con­tin­gent re­ceived sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments for train­ing (trans­porta­tion and train­ing), these young men had a smile on their face when they were to­geth­er.

On the way, to their on­ly train­ing ses­sion last Tues­day, the weath­er changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in Girona, from sun to rain, then thun­der with light­ing and fi­nal­ly hail and as the stones from above hit the coach and taxis, every­thing be­gan to look rather doubt­ful. The taxi dri­ver, a cit­i­zen of Girona, was on­ly shak­ing his head and con­stant­ly mak­ing the sign of the cross in this pre­dom­i­nant­ly Catholic state.

Yet still, when the team ar­rived to train on the grass sur­face was wa­ter­logged and al­most un­playable, the team ea­ger­ly ran to the field to prac­tice. Even­tu­al­ly, the au­thor­i­ties at the com­mu­ni­ty ground, fear­ing for the sur­face, re­quest­ed the team to use the ar­ti­fi­cial sur­face at the back, which they did. Still, I must add with a smile and en­er­gy, not of­ten seen in this coun­try, where many of us com­plain, once we do not get our own way.

For me, it was that en­thu­si­asm that sent a sig­nal, that this team was bond­ed as one, it was not on­ly the fact, that they all time­ly as­sem­bled for a tra­di­tion­al walk or the team bus, but it was the in­domitable very rarely seen at the na­tion­al lev­el. Let me rephrase that com­ment, to say, that "Team build­ing on­ly works when every­one is read­ing from the same script", and dur­ing the brief time in Spain, the play­ers all un­der­stood the phi­los­o­phy of coach Den­nis Lawrence and his staff.

Lawrence’s last mes­sage, as the play­ers gath­ered in a cir­cle to say a part­ing prayer, res­onat­ed with me for the en­tire night, it was one of: "No ex­cus­es, de­spite the prob­lems, de­spite the dif­fi­cul­ties, this was the time to demon­strate the re­solve to aim for suc­cess and leave every­thing on the field out there".

This may not have been No­vem­ber 15, 2005 in Bahrain, where the Bahrain of­fi­cials ban­ished the T&T sup­port­ers to an awk­ward part of the sta­di­um, on­ly for the na­tion­al team’s man­age­ment to re­act an­gri­ly to that, and claim, "Bahrain would pay!" which his­to­ry showed through Den­nis "Tallest" Lawrence’s goal that Bahrain ul­ti­mate­ly did. But it was clear, Lawrence un­der­stood the mes­sage he was de­liv­er­ing and his play­ers knew ex­act­ly what their coach was de­mand­ing.

If one did not know bet­ter, it could well be, that there are some in T&T, that want the team to fail, that want to pound their chests and be proud of any dis­as­ter or any prob­lem in­curred by the team. Foot­ball, I has­ten to add, is not the on­ly sport that has this, it ex­ists in our so­ci­ety, be­cause every­one likes to be the leader, to have the best ideas and to suc­ceed, for­get­ting that the lega­cy should be mea­sured in what is left af­ter them, not what is done by them alone.

Speak­ing of caps, those play­ers that made their first cap for their coun­try will al­ways re­mem­ber the oc­ca­sion, so to watch the joy on Kestor Julien’s face or the glint in his eye was worth re­play­ing for all who seek to rep­re­sent their coun­try with pride, pur­pose and grace.

If on­ly we could all un­der­stand the im­por­tance of sports, and its role in build­ing the so­ci­ety and en­hanc­ing the qual­i­ty of life that we all live, and there­fore try to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to its ex­is­tence and help in its growth.

When the fi­nal whis­tle blew on Thurs­day night in Barcelona, the agony on the face of the UAE, the 77th ranked team which had been prepar­ing for over six weeks to lose to the 91st ranked T&T was there for all to wit­ness. Their World fa­mous Ital­ian coach Al­ber­to Za­c­cheroni (AC Mi­lan, Ju­ven­tus, Lazio and In­ter) was vis­i­bly up­set by the 2-0 loss. How­ev­er, on the night, Lawrence’s team, ably mar­shalled by cap­tain Khaleem Hy­land were in­tent on de­liv­er­ing a mes­sage to all that could hear, lis­ten and even­tu­al­ly watch.

It is one of "Uni­ty breeds suc­cess, uni­ty binds us to­geth­er and keeps us strong".