The name Lloyd Cur­tis "Sonoltee" An­drews may not be pop­u­lar in lo­cal foot­ball to many over the past three decades.

How­ev­er, af­ter be­ing around the sport for the last 30-plus years, the 57-year-old coach An­drews has fi­nal­ly made his mark at the high­est lev­el of do­mes­tic foot­ball in T&T.

This af­ter guid­ing T&T De­fence Force to a record 23rd na­tion­al league crown and their fourth T&T Pro League in the com­pe­ti­tion's 20-year his­to­ry. It's al­so the team's first since the 2012/2013 sea­son.

The Army/Coast-Guard, a dom­i­nant force in lo­cal and Conac­caf foot­ball back in the day, cap­tured the na­tion­al league crown in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1995 fol­lowed by tri­umphs in the Se­mi-Pro­fes­sion­al League in 1996 and 1997 and the T&T Pro League in­au­gur­al sea­son in 1999, 2010/2011, and the 2012/2013 cam­paign.

And last week fol­low­ing the post­pone­ment of the rest of the 2019/2020 11-club Pro League sea­son due to the world­wide Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic a de­ci­sion was tak­en to name the "Teteron Men" un­der the guid­ance of first-year head coach An­drews as league cham­pi­ons with three match­es left to com­plete the sea­son.

As it stood, De­fence Force led by vet­er­an cap­tain Jer­wyn "Bal­ly" Balt­haz­ar head­ed the ta­ble with 42 points from 17 match­es, sev­en ahead of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers while Point Fortin Civic dur­ing their best cam­paign was third with 28 points, one ahead of six-time cham­pi­ons and last year's league win­ners' W Con­nec­tion who had a match in hand.

The Pro League re­lease stat­ed: Giv­en the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing the world­wide pan­dem­ic, COVID19 (coro­n­avirus), the League has de­cid­ed to de­clare the De­fence Force Foot­ball Club the 2020 League cham­pi­ons. The de­ci­sion was tak­en be­cause we will not be able to com­plete the League any­time soon. At present, we now have nine af­fect­ed cit­i­zens re­port­ed and it is more than like­ly that this will grow in num­bers over the com­ing weeks.”

It said al­so: “The League is of the view that this is the best de­ci­sion to take un­der the cir­cum­stances and ex­tends con­grat­u­la­tions to the De­fence Force Foot­ball Club. We al­so con­tin­ue to pray for our na­tion at this time.”

Com­ment­ing on be­ing de­clared cham­pi­ons, An­drews who got in­volved in the man­age­r­i­al as­pect of the sport through a small-goal com­pe­ti­tion in his com­mu­ni­ty of La Hor­quet­ta al­most 25 years ago be­fore mov­ing on­to La Hor­quet­ta Daz­zlers in the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion said on Mon­day: It was a bit­ter­sweet feel­ing for me per­son­al­ly."

He added, "As a coach, it is al­ways nice to lead your team to ti­tles and more so a na­tion­al league ti­tle, but I would have loved to fin­ish off the rest of the sea­son as well, with on­ly three match­es to go.

"We suf­fered one de­feat in the first round of ten match­es, that was against Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, a 2-1 de­feat and so far in the sec­ond round of com­pe­ti­tion we were un­de­feat­ed, and with match­es left to play against Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed, Cen­tral FC and Point Fortin, we were pret­ty con­fi­dent of not los­ing any of those match­es."

Re­flect­ing of the sea­son be­fore it be­ing de­clared over, An­drews said the turn­ing point in con­fi­dence for his play­ers came when they de­feat­ed main ri­val, Rangers 2-0 at the La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground, Phase II, La Hor­quet­ta de­spite na­tion­al de­fend­er Cur­tis Gon­za­les be­ing shown a straight red card by ref­er­ee Quin­cy Williams for vi­o­lent con­duct against Kishun Seecha­ran on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2020.

Be­fore that match we came up with spe­cif­ic tac­tics for the en­counter with Rangers, and while at first some of the play­ers were ap­pre­hen­sive to­wards I got them as well as oth­er mem­bers of my tech­ni­cal staff to be­lieve in it.
"Dur­ing the train­ing drill I boast­ed to them that once we were able to do it prop­er­ly in train­ing for 15 min­utes non-stop it will work in the match, and de­spite the ear­ly send­ing off of Gon­za­les, we were able to ac­com­plish our goal."

It was the first match that I saw peo­ple re­al­ly tak­ing a se­ri­ous look at what we were do­ing and af­ter­wards our per­for­mance against Rangers was praised in many quar­ters.

"Com­ing up against a qual­i­ty team like Rangers we had to do some­thing dif­fer­ent and even though they had the play­er ad­van­tage it looked as though we had two or three play­ers more on the field and this was all down to the play­ers be­ing able to adapt to do­ing dif­fer­ent things while play­ing dif­fer­ent po­si­tions.

He added, "So for us, it was main­ly about know­ing how to man­age and con­trol match­es and from then on we had a re­newed high lev­el of con­fi­dence and match­es start­ed to be­come much eas­i­er for us."

An­drews, who joined the De­fence Force back on Jan­u­ary 11, 1982, un­til 2013 said that it was pleas­ing to see that some­times when his team didn't play their best brand of foot­ball the play­ers were still able to pull out a win.
"You know you have a good team when you're able to play bad­ly and still get wins, while you main­tain that form by win­ning when play­ing good foot­ball as well.

How­ev­er, the pos­i­tive end to his first sea­son in charge of the team was not some­thing many may have ex­pect­ed even though An­drews had the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the De­fence Force team who won two Dig­i­cel Pro Bowls and a First Cit­i­zens Cup un­der for­mer coach and play­er, Mar­vin Gor­don, now an as­sis­tant coach at San Juan Jabloteh.

A slight­ly peev­ed An­drews not­ed that while he was hap­py be­ing part of the De­fence Force tech­ni­cal staff back then he felt he was nev­er ful­ly giv­en the recog­ni­tion as be­ing the team's "TD" dur­ing those two sea­sons.

"So when I was ap­proached to take up the coach­ing role my main fo­cus was on win­ning what I con­sid­er the biggest prize in lo­cal foot­ball, which is the na­tion­al league crown."

An­drews, a for­mer East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion coach of T&T Coast Guard and then T&T Air Guard/Coast Guard com­bi­na­tion up un­til the 20152016 sea­sons ex­plained, "I was not in favour of putting too much em­pha­sis on the As­cen­sion League while get­ting to the semi­fi­nals of the First Cit­i­zens Cup was my tar­get, as I planned to use those com­pe­ti­tions as a key part of my pre-sea­son to try and im­ple­ment and stamp my style of play on the team.
"At the same time I told the play­ers that if we found our­selves in a po­si­tion to win the As­cen­sion League we will try our best and do it, but our fo­cus was to be in peak shape for when the Pro League be­gan.

"When we start­ed there were doubts about my ca­pa­bil­i­ties even from with­in, not­ed An­drews who was part of a group of lo­cal coach­es that in­clud­ed the de­ceased Arthur "Jap" Brown, and Kei­th Look Loy who trav­elled to Brazil for a coach­ing course ear­ly in his ca­reer.

"That ex­pe­ri­ence in Brazil and vis­it­ing clubs like Flu­mi­nense, San­tos, Sao Paulo, Botafo­go and Fla­men­go was an ex­pe­ri­ence that helped make me in­to the coach I am to­day along with the staunch sup­port of my de­ceased wife, Wendy An­drews., who al­ways said that I would be suc­cess­ful."

"As it turned out, we were able to cap­ture the As­cen­sion League crown and we didn't man­age to get to to the semis of the First Cit­i­zens Cup, but over­all they both served us well in get­ting the right mix of play­ers in terms of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence with the likes of Adri­an Welch, Brent Sam, Ja­mali Gar­cia, Je­lani Fe­lix, Aaron Enill, Jameel Coop­er, Jamille Boatswain, and Dwight Quin­tero com­ing in­to to blend with ex­pe­ri­enced cam­paign­ers Balt­haz­ar, De­vorn Jorsling, Gon­za­les, Rodell El­cock, Shel­don Clarke, An­drew Marchan.

Not to be for­got­ten An­drews al­so praised the all-round team­work of his staff which in­clud­ed ex-na­tion­al mid­field­er and na­tion­al se­nior and youth team as­sis­tant coach, Hut­son "Bar­ber" Charles, Devin El­cock, Sion Cain (train­er), Demetri Vil­lore­ol (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Mc Al­lis­ter Estra­da (med­ical), Shel­don Bark­er (equip­ment man­ag­er) and War­rant Of­fi­cer Ay­ee­sha Sad­low.

Look­ing ahead, An­drews said he along with his tech­ni­cal staff and play­ers are all pray­ing for the coun­try and tak­ing pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures with re­gards to the COVID-19 virus and wish­ing for things to get back to nor­mal as soon as pos­si­ble so that they can get back on­to the field of play.