Alvin Corneal

Let us all take a break from the cur­rent hap­pen­ings of sport so that we can bid farewell to Lance Mur­ray, one of the great­est con­trib­u­tors of sport at all lev­els in this coun­try over the past 70 years.

Even if some are too young to know what a com­pe­tent foot­baller and crick­eter he was for Sham­rock and Queen's Park and some­times at na­tion­al lev­el, it will be re­miss of me if I do not share some of the oc­ca­sions where Lance was much more than the right arm leg-spin­ner and in­side for­ward that he per­formed so ad­mirably.

For­tu­nate­ly, he was the coach of Fa­ti­ma Col­lege in 1955 when the late Joey Carew and I were in the school's foot­ball team, and his in­struc­tion to play­ers was so easy to fol­low, I won­dered how good he re­al­ly was on the field.

This was quick­ly found out when he joined in our prac­tice ses­sions and demon­strat­ed his ex­quis­ite skills with the ball. He was strong on strat­e­gy and this was proven when he taught us a set play which he want­ed us to use in a BDV match against Notre Dame.

It was my first en­try in­to or­gan­ised set play, and we scored a goal to win the match with a well-ex­e­cut­ed piece of team­work by the play­ers in­volved.

So my as­so­ci­a­tion with Lance stretched from the play­ing fields through to the ad­min­is­tra­tive side of the TTCB, in­to be­ing ap­point­ed mem­bers of a gov­ern­ment com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the game of crick­et in or­der to make amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion wher­ev­er nec­es­sary.

It was a 2 1/2-year task for the en­tire group of per­sons which in­clud­ed out­stand­ing crick­eters like Andy Gan­teaume, Lance Pierre, Pri­or Jones, Ny­ron As­gar­ali, Dr No­bel Sarkar, An­tho­ny Gou­veia, Barb Fras­er, Ainsworth Hare­wood, and led by the well-re­spect­ed om­buds­man at the time, Sir Alan Rees.

Lance's con­tri­bu­tion was sol­id, well in­ten­tioned, and fi­nal­ly led to a con­sti­tu­tion which had ac­tu­al­ly de­moc­ra­tised the game in keep­ing with the coun­try's rules and reg­u­la­tions. We then worked to­geth­er on ra­dio, do­ing crick­et and foot­ball com­men­taries, an area which he walked me through my ear­ly years.

He pro­vid­ed a lifestyle which was an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple to the young peo­ple who in­ter­act­ed with him, and es­pe­cial­ly his own chil­dren. One of them, Deryck Mur­ray, turned out to be fa­mous for his wick­et­keep­ing and lead­er­ship qual­i­ties on and off the crick­et field at the high­est lev­el of the game.

Lance may not have scored hun­dreds, nei­ther has he been a pro­lif­ic scor­er of goals, but he al­ways pro­vid­ed the type of ad­vice which was re­spon­si­ble for good de­ci­sion-mak­ing at the WICB board meet­ings, and the nu­mer­ous com­mit­tees of which he was a mem­ber.

I ad­mired the man, re­spect­ed him and was pleased to have had his ad­vice at any time and on any life is­sue for which I was in need. Amidst the chal­leng­ing times where sport has found it­self, whether it be on the street cor­ners, the com­mu­ni­ties or in the clubs still ex­ist­ing, Lance's pres­ence and guid­ance would have fos­tered the type of changes which may well have brought our sport back on its won­der­ful road of progress and en­joy­ment, where it once was.

The 91-year old may well have felt the pain of the im­age of sport in to­day's so­ci­ety and wished that he had the strength to take up the chal­lenge, but the Good Lord saved him from the quag­mire that present­ly ex­ists and al­low that won­der­ful hu­man be­ing to rest in peace.

Farewell, Lance, you have served us well. Thank you, my friend. On be­half of my fam­i­ly and the sports fans of this na­tion, our sin­cer­est sym­pa­thy to his fam­i­ly and may he rest in peace.