The lo­cal foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty was crushed on Wednes­day fol­low­ing the un­time­ly pass­ing of Dar­ryl Ma­habir, the for­mer North East Stars own­er and di­rec­tor who be­came an­oth­er sta­tis­tic of the COVID-19 virus.

At 48, Ma­habir was the own­er of the tasty Dar­ryl's Fa­mous Foods for­mer­ly 'Japs' Chick­en fran­chise who, be­cause of his love for the game of foot­ball, en­tered the top flight T&T Pro League in 2002. That move helped in trans­form­ing the San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty where he grew up, as it cre­at­ed many op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who lived there.

The team re­ceived a 'bap­tism of fire' in their first sea­son, fin­ish­ing last in the league with a dis­mal record of four wins, two ties, and 22 loss­es. They im­proved dra­mat­i­cal­ly in 2003, how­ev­er, jump­ing from last to third, as they went 19–7–10. They im­proved even fur­ther in 2004, sur­pris­ing every­one by win­ning the league with a dom­i­nant 14–5–2 per­for­mance. They fin­ished fifth in 2005.

On Thurs­day­day, two for­mer play­ers turned coach - Kevin Jef­freys and Derek King - hailed Ma­habir as unique, say­ing he pre­sent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties as coach and ad­min­is­tra­tors to them.

Jef­freys said: "It mashed me up yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) when I got the news. Dar­ryl did a lot for me and my fam­i­ly. One of the rea­sons I re­tired was be­cause he saw me as a good man­ag­er, al­though I want­ed to coach.

"He said 'you would be a good ad­min­is­tra­tor' and he re­al­ly gave me that op­por­tu­ni­ty to get to the oth­er side of foot­ball, so I owe a lot to him. It is still un­be­liev­able to me be­cause I thought he would have been able to fight that cold, so when I got the call yes­ter­day it was re­al emo­tion­al for me.

"At North/East Stars I did every­thing. I was a tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor ini­tial­ly, I was a club man­ag­er, I was a youth team coach, I was as­sis­tant coach, so North/East was an in­sti­tu­tion that af­ford­ed me a lot of ex­pe­ri­ences on the oth­er side of play­ing.

"Dar­ryl and I had a busi­ness arrange­ment as well. I used to pro­vide sal­ads for him in the ear­ly part of Japs. And af­ter he took that sab­bat­i­cal of two years, I think was 2007-2009, he want­ed to come back out with the team, that's how Brent San­cho got in­volved."

And ac­cord­ing to King: "Dar­ryl would spend his last dol­lar to see foot­ball. He used to throw off-sea­son tour­na­ment in San­gre Grande, be­cause he just love the sport, I don't think you get plen­ty like him.

"Where we built that bond though, was when a sur­vey was done among the T&T Pro League teams and they had North East com­ing last, and I told him 'boss you don't wor­ry, we will win the league for you'.

"We went on to lift the ti­tle that year and he was re­al­ly re­al­ly shocked, be­cause we didn't re­al­ly had fund­ing. And when he met with the play­ers he was very hon­est with them and I don't think he is ow­ing any play­er, any mon­ey."

North East is now de­funct, hav­ing been tak­en over by busi­ness­man Ryan Nunes. The club is now called AC Port-of-Spain.

Un­der Ma­habir, how­ev­er, the club can boast of be­ing cham­pi­ons once in 2004; Big Six Win­ners 2004; FA Tro­phy win­ners 2003; run­ners-up 2006, 2010–11; First Cit­i­zens Cup Run­ners-up 2006,2016/2017 2014; Toy­ota Clas­sic win­ners 2012 and Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield win­ners in 2010.