T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion­er, Gary Grif­fith is hop­ing that the 2021 Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup, once giv­en the ‘green light’ to get go­ing in March/April will be able to un­earth hid­den tal­ent in T&T.

The CoP was speak­ing at the launch held at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sec­ond Floor, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Among the main per­sons in at­ten­dance were na­tion­al men’s se­nior team coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, Su­san Wor­rell, events man­ag­er of Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), and Liam Don­nel­ly, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Dig­i­cel Busi­ness.

Look­ing to­wards the stag­ing of the next edi­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup an up­beat Grif­fith said, “Let us use this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to find hid­den tal­ent and op­por­tu­ni­ty to dream and op­por­tu­ni­ty to build re­la­tion­ships and just make this place a bet­ter coun­try.”  

Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful in­au­gur­al stag­ing in 2019, this year’s sec­ond edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion was card­ed for Au­gust 13-24 but was even­tu­al­ly can­celled due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

Ad­mit­ting that sports was, by and large, his first love and not law en­force­ment, Grif­fith said he has been in­volved in sports for decades from all lev­els up to the lev­el of na­tion­al teams and he has seen what sport can do for a young per­son, fam­i­ly and coun­try.

Not­ing that dur­ing the 2006 World Cup, the low­est de­tec­tion of crime was record­ed in T&T dur­ing the two weeks af­ter the team’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion Grif­fith added, “Sport can do that, you can very well dream, you can be­lieve and foot­ball ob­vi­ous­ly is the main as­pect and el­e­ment that young men and women are in­volved in.

“Not every­one can be a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller, not every­one can play in a World Cup Fi­nal and it’s about less than one per cent of every­one who plays foot­ball will do so at the high­est lev­el and make it as their liv­ing.

"But let's look at foot­ball not just as young men and women try­ing to be­come pro­fes­sion­al foot­ballers as a ca­reer, but the char­ac­ter traits you get from sport, es­pe­cial­ly foot­ball, it makes you not just a bet­ter foot­baller but a bet­ter man and woman in the so­ci­ety.

"Sport brings char­ac­ter traits such as lead­er­ship, tac­tics, team­work, punc­tu­al­i­ty, not giv­ing up, and these are the char­ac­ter traits we want of our young peo­ple in our so­ci­ety.

"And through the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup, we can work in pro­ject­ed ar­eas where they have nev­er had that op­por­tu­ni­ty and now they can say, I have a chance to be part of some­thing and I can build and de­vel­op my char­ac­ter through sport.

"When I look at the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup the last time it was held, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we had to can­cel it this year due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, it wasn’t just the in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment, the com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­oped, you start­ed see­ing the vil­lage work­ing and get­ting clos­er and then the com­mu­ni­ties al­so be­came clos­er with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties as the gaps were bridg­ing.

"That’s what we are look­ing for in this Com­mis­sion­ers Cup to build re­la­tion­ships, strength­en char­ac­ter and make young men and women bet­ter per­sons and un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are peo­ple who try to ques­tion this and not see the val­ue with the Po­lice Ser­vice get­ting in­volved in some­thing like this.

"This kind of things hap­pens world­wide and this Po­lice Ser­vice once I am Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic will do all that is pos­si­ble to try and help young men and women in dif­fer­ent places, try to give them that op­por­tu­ni­ty just to dream be­cause what we are see­ing in T&T foot­ball is un­less you are play­ing Sec­ondary Schools foot­ball or Pro League foot­ball, you will not be giv­en that op­por­tu­ni­ty and there is so much hid­den tal­ent out there, it is un­be­liev­able!”

"This is what the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup is about, it al­lows a per­son who may not be in one of the top 15 schools that play in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion in Col­leges League or in the eight clubs in the Pro League to be seen by the me­dia, it gives the young per­sons an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go out there and be able to dream and be­lieve."

Grif­fith al­so laud­ed na­tion­al coach, for­mer Eng­land in­ter­na­tion­al Ter­ry Fen­wick, who through his Foot­ball Fac­to­ry Acad­e­my will be a key part­ner in the stag­ing of the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup.

“He has played at the high­est lev­el at the FI­FA World Cup, FA Cups and clubs and T&T, we are very for­tu­nate to have an in­di­vid­ual like this and in­stead of us try­ing to cir­cle the wag­ons, what we do in this coun­try is to try and cause hate, bit­ter­ness, di­vide and de­stroy be­cause we are not part of it.

“But when it comes to sport and I am heav­i­ly in­volved in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sports or­gan­i­sa­tions just to make a dif­fer­ence, so let us try to build, and work to­geth­er and try to re­spect the per­sons in au­thor­i­ty and thank­ful­ly through the sup­port of Fen­wick, Wor­rell and Don­nel­ly, they have played a very big part to­wards the suc­cess, so thank you Dig­i­cel and NL­CB for pro­vid­ing the sup­port that we need.

"This is not just about dol­lars and sense, the sup­port that you all are pro­vid­ing is go­ing to give us so much op­por­tu­ni­ty to work and go much deep­er in­to ar­eas that we did not go last time around, and just maybe we will be able to find one or two fu­ture na­tion­al play­ers."

Don­nel­ly added that from Dig­i­cel's per­spec­tive they are all very ex­cit­ed and very proud to get in­volved in such a great ini­tia­tive for T&T.

He said, "As a glob­al com­pa­ny, we al­ways try to work with­in the coun­try we op­er­ate to try and dri­ve com­mu­ni­ty sports and work with the as­so­ci­a­tions such as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and we firm­ly be­lieve that this a step­ping stone to­wards help­ing com­mu­ni­ties and change the ev­i­dent per­spec­tive of young chil­dren who will be ex­posed to these en­ti­ties, and we al­so see this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to use tech­nol­o­gy from the dig­i­tal world to try and ex­pose and get more T&T foot­ballers on a much more glob­al scale.

“We are al­so hap­py to work with Foot­ball Fac­to­ry and we sup­port and ap­pre­cia­tive of the work they have done over the years to gen­er­ate this type of so­cial dy­nam­ic and im­prove the foot­ball abil­i­ty with­in this coun­try."

Foot­ball Fac­to­ry Foun­da­tion founder Fen­wick, who left a na­tion­al team train­ing ses­sion ear­ly to at­tend the launch, said he was ex­cit­ed to be talk­ing about ac­tu­al­ly get­ting on­to the foot­ball field with youths, and not just hav­ing Zoom ses­sions as has been the norm for the past eight months or so due to the COVID-19.

“Due to the COVID-19 virus, we have gone al­most a whole year do­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing work­ing from home, try to get through a few is­sues be­hind the scenes with foot­ball.

"But the kids we for­get, kids like Erin Steeple (MVP of 2019 Com­mis­sion­er's Cup) that are not play­ing foot­ball on the fields any more, are not go­ing to schools any­more, there is no leagues, there is no teams that are play­ing, no Pro League, Schools Leagues, it just haven’t hap­pened, so we tend to for­get that every­body is look­ing at the econ­o­my and look­ing at how things are go­ing in busi­ness with peo­ple los­ing their jobs but we tend to for­get there are kids out there who al­so have lives and am­bi­tions.

"These kids have great abil­i­ty and yes they must be able to dream about a fu­ture in foot­ball. With their skill sets they want to get out and prove them­selves but due the COVID-19 virus has made it dif­fi­cult and our­selves with the na­tion­al team try­ing to bring play­ers to­geth­er it has been dif­fi­cult be­cause we have stopped-start and we have had our po­lit­i­cal is­sues in the back­ground, and which kind of now have been re­solved, but again it's about kids and their com­mu­ni­ties and how we can help them and fast track and give them hope and am­bi­tion to move for­ward with their cho­sen life sport and ca­reer move.

“What I would love to say is that the Com­mis­sion­er’s Cup theme ‘Shoot Goals and Not Guns” is a won­der­ful say­ing that is mov­ing young­sters away from po­ten­tial gang and scary sit­u­a­tions in­to sports, recog­nis­ing not every­one is aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly-in­clined as some peo­ple have oth­er skill-sets in life and they need to use them go­ing for­ward.”

Fen­wick al­so praised Don­nel­ly for the phras­ing “To­geth­er is Bet­ter” say­ing, "Of course it is be­cause we have to work to­geth­er and we have to try and make it hap­pen to­geth­er."

Not­ing that Jan­u­ary 2021 will make it 21 years of liv­ing in T&T, Fen­wick said when he came here Jan­u­ary 4, 2000, with­in a week of ar­riv­ing he was told what crabs in a bar­rel meant.

“I nev­er took it on and just got on with things and we have got to start recog­nis­ing that if it’s not for me, it’s not for any­body and start work­ing to­geth­er and start get­ting in­to the com­mu­ni­ties and change the old guard and change the way peo­ple's per­cep­tion has been in the past as these young­sters need some­thing brand new and pos­i­tive.

“That some­times mean rub­bing some peo­ple the wrong way try­ing to force the is­sue to get re­sults rather than just dis­cus­sions that doesn’t go any­where.”

Fen­wick stat­ed that Foot­ball Fac­to­ry will pro­vide all the tech­ni­cal sup­port and they are al­ready net­work­ing with peo­ple over­seas to make the com­pe­ti­tion work as far as schol­ar­ships are con­cerned and they are al­so work­ing on mak­ing an un­be­liev­able win-win sit­u­a­tion for not just the kids, play­ers and com­mu­ni­ty in hav­ing an over­seas tour as a prize for the win­ning teams.