Caribbean 4 – Saint Kitts
Getting to Saint Kitts from Sint Maarten is quite easy. It is a short flight, and the most notable aspect is the temporary accommodation at the airport. This is not quite the last reminder of the Hurricane, as I have a stopover at the same airport on the way out of Saint Kitts as well. One of the first things you notice on St. Kitts is that while it may only be a short flight, it is a long distance in hurricane terms, and this island was not a sufferer from Irma.
I am booked into the Bird Rock hotel, a fairly simple accommodation, chosen mainly on price. Its disadvantage being that it is a fair distance from any other facilities.
I am travelling to a game the same night, and as I do not even know the exact location, I have no choice but to accept the taxi fares, and the quotes seem to be high. I am to discover that the quotes were fairly standard, and is just that taxi fares are high wherever you go here. Indeed, throughout my Caribbean trip so far, I have found that taxi fares cost more than most European cities.
In Saint Kitts, the taxis are not the only things where cost is over the top compared to those I am used to in the UK. There are a number of touristy options available here, with the hotel being next to two of them. In the end, I decided against trying any of these due to price and in some case other factors.
Some of these costs seem to be due to the fact that most of the tourists here are travelling on cruise ships and have actually paid for their side trips on board. It appears that the cruise ship passenger is willing to shell out fortunes in extras.
Other factors also put me off, such as seeing the enclosures they keep the dolphins in for the Swimming with Dolphins trip. The dolphin area was adjacent to my hotel, and judging by the numbers there whenever a cruise ship is in, my feelings did not damage their business or help the dolphins themselves much. I have a brother who has cruised the area more than once, and he says I am probably right about the dolphins, and he says that while the price for Scuba diving is not extortionate, full Scuba diving should not be on offer to untrained customer who do not have a PADI certificate. I know someone who does dive training and I and I am sure he would agree.
The trip I would have taken for a lesser price, which was also over US$100, although they do not advertise other figures is a three hour round trip using the only railway (its narrow gauge and was built to move sugar around the island in the old days). Again, my brother thinks it is overpriced. Apparently, the companies may well be contracted with the cruise companies not to offer at a discount. It may have been worth asking on Sunday, when no cruise ships were on the island, but most likely the tour did not run that day
Anyway, back to the football. The Saint Kitts and Nevis League has two divisions, with all the Premier division league matches being staged at the Warner Park Football Stadium at the weekend. The division one games are staged across the islands, and there are matches most Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The mid-week games are scheduled for 6 p.m., and the Saturday games are at 3 p.m. Two of the teams in Division One are based on Nevis, the smaller island of the couplet that make up this country. Both of these share a ground. All of their games take place at 3 p.m. on Saturday, as it is difficult to travel between the isles for evening games. A couple of seasons ago, Bath United were in the Premier League, meaning all the games that season were at Warner Park.
So, my first match on Saint Kitts involved a taxi ride, and started a couple of hours after arrival at the hotel. With the exception of the island’s tail, a narrow strip of land to the south and close to Nevis, all of the island’s villages are close to a single road that makes a circuit of the island. The centre being a series of three mountain peaks, that are old volcanoes. Many of the Caribbean islands have been formed in this way, with mountainous volcanic peaks in the centre.
The villages are roughly the locations of residential areas that date back to the slavery era, when each would be a plantation with a different owner exploiting the imported work force as labour. As with most of the islands that depended on this economy, there was a collapse after the emancipation of the slave labour force, as the sugar plantations were not economical once it became necessary to pay the workforce. The new economy of islands such as Saint Kitts now depends on fleecing the tourists. If you put it another way, the descendants of former slaves are now overcharging the descendants of former countrymen of slavers.
I was heading to Ottley’s. A village on the north side of the island. I had to pay the taxi fares here, and although there was some negotiation, I still felt I was overpaying. In fact, it appears I was not overpaying by local standards, it is just that the pricing here is high. I paid EC$150 for a return journey of no more then 10 km each way. That is about £40. At least as the driver was happy for me to pay only on the return run, I knew he was going to arrive and take me back.
The comment from the FA was “there is only one field in each village”, when I asked about addresses and directions. This was true, as when we arrived in Ottley’s, we could see the floodlights and it was easy for the driver to drop me and arrange a time to pick me up again. He did at least give me a quick opportunity to ask whether I was in the right place, as we were around 20 minutes before kick-off, and apart from the fact it was a football ground and the floodlights were on, there was no sign of the game. I thought I would try and find my way to the dressing rooms – at which point one discovers that this grassed area close to the road was in fact the home dressing room. At one end of the field, there was an area where a grass bank gave way to a series of concrete steps. About ten minutes after my arrival, this became the away team dressing room! About the same time, the referee arrived and changed next to his car and not far from the home area.
The pitch itself was a somewhat bumpy grass surface, but not in bad condition. The floodlights were on the top of wooden telegraph poles, two on each of six poles, except one light was out. Even if all twelve were working, the lighting level would be poor and very patchy. We eventually got away thirty minutes after the scheduled kick off time.
Even at this point, we were not fully ready – the home side were short of one player. Worse still, from their point of view the missing player was the goalkeeper. When he took the field, ten minutes after the scheduled kick off time, his side were 1-0 up. It did not stay that way.
The home side was Lodge Patriots, with Lodge being the next village further down the road further than my journey. The away side was Trinity/Challengers United. Both sides have a sponsor’s name tagged in front of the name. It was easy to work out that Davis Construction, with the name plastered all over the shirts were the sponsors for Lodge, but less easy to decide on the opposition. The full name was given as KFC Trinity/Challengers United. The sponsorship does not go as far as getting names on shirts, as I was to find out over the week, only a minority of sponsors go to the extent of putting the names on shirts. Hence, I needed to check further to find that Trinity and Challengers are adjacent villages on the south side of the island, and the sponsor is indeed the fast food company.
With eleven men on the field, Lodge Patriots soon surrendered their lead, and then regained it before two goals in a few minutes before the break meant they went in a goal behind. Again, the scores were level at three each, three minutes into the second half, but fifteen minutes later when Clyde Herbert scored a penalty for Trinity/Challengers United, it put his side 7-3 up. For Herbert this was a great individual achievement as well, as this was his fourth in the match. There were no further goals for ten minutes, and then another short burst of two goals in four minutes brought the patriots back to 7-5. This may give them some hope, but in fact the final quarter of an hour went by without further score. This was the first game I had ever seen to end with a 5-7 score line. With over 6,000 matches in my records, first time score lines are rare and now mean a minimum of ten goals in a game. This was only the fourth occasion have I seen both teams score five (or more) in a match.
For much of the second half, I was talking too Lornette Byron who was insisting that the linesman should have disallowed two of the goals for offside. From time to time she berated the linesman for his incorrect decisions. The linesman himself took time to tell her all the goals were good, but she was not disheartened. We were joined by her granddaughter, Tonjelle (age 7). Tonjelle is a bright young thing he took a great interest in the stop watch and camera hanging around my neck. I allowed her to borrow the camera and she spent some time chasing the linesman up and down and taking pictures of his back. She also proved that you can take a selfie with a camera of this type
I went into the FA offices before the next game. The contrast between the office of an association such as St Kitts and Nevis and Sint Maarten are pronounced, and shows the benefits of having FIFA membership. While Sint Maarten’s main officials are all amateur, with jobs of their own between matches, and the FA has an administrative staff of one, who deals with all the league matches and registrations as well as the e-mails from people like me, the Saint Kitts and Nevis FA had five people in the office when I arrived.
Most of the information I needed to see the games was easily obtained from the receptionist, Makeda. I then had a chat with Dexter Tyrell and Lenny Lake who were in the office. Everyone repeated the advice given to me at the game on Tuesday – that going to Nevis would be pointless in football terms as the away team would not turn up. It is clear that the league is struggling to run its lower division. It started the season with 14 teams, but is now down to 12. As far as I can see, teams will not be fined or disciplined if they do not turn up for games, but will simply have a default result recorded against them. The main island is quite small – the main road that creates a circuit around the coast is about 30 km long, but it can still be difficult to get from one village to another. There are bus services along this road, but no timetables and probably little or no evening service. Taxi prices have been set with tourists in mind, and even though I expect the locals can get a lower rate, it is clear that they are not within the scope for the average citizen.
At the end of the season, the top four in each division has a play-off. For the Premier division, this is after everyone has played each other three times. It is a ten-team league, so that is 27 games each (all at the one stadium). In the First division, the clubs play the standard home and away sequence, so 22 games each now the league is down to 12 members. The top four competitions are all played at Warner Park over the course of a week. For the first division, the top two in this series (with no benefit from the earlier 22 games) gets promotion. For the Premier, again there is no advantage from the earlier games, they are just to get you there. The top two then play a final – which is basically a best of three series. The clubs play two games, (decided on penalties if drawn). If the two winners are not the same, then a third deciding game takes place.
Last season was not typical, Village Superstars lived up to their name and won the original series, all three of the “top four” games and the two games in the final. Looking back further, it seems the regular season champion rarely wins the play-off series. In 2017, Saint Pauls were top of the regular season, four points ahead, but then missed out on the finals on goal difference. Cayon won all three games at that stage and also both games in the final. In 2016, Newtown were top, by four points. They beat Cayon 3-1 in the final game, meaning Cayon scraped into the final four on goal difference. As this was the final game, Cayon knew all they had to do in that game was avoid a seven-goal defeat. If Garden Hotspurs (who just missed out) had not been held 0-0 in their preceding game, one wonders if the last one would have been different. One of the catches of a single stadium league is you cannot even have the final day matches played at the same time.
Newtown picked up just one point in the next three games, and finished bottom of the group of four, while Cayon were second to Conaree. The same pairing as I was to see as my last game. In the final, Conaree won 2-0 at the first attempt, but Cayon won the second game 1-0. This was the only year the final has gone to three matches, although it should be pointed out that is a recently added option. The third game was 0-0, so despite finishing below Conaree in the main season and the final three games, and even being 2-1 down on aggregate over three games, Cayon were allowed to take the title on a penalty shoot-out!
Not surprisingly, a few of the people I spoke to disagree with the format. I can understand their frustrations, as they play all season and then the prizes are delivered in a few games in the last week or two. I think I know the main reason why the FA wishes to keep the format though.
When I was at the office, I asked why all the top division matches and most ladies’ games are at the same stadium, despite the fact that several of the clubs have decent stadiums of their own. The answer I was told was in the financing. The SKNFA pay a fixed lease fee for the stadium each season, regardless of the number of matches played on it. They then charge 15 East Caribbean Dollars for each person that enters. My estimates were that there were around 350 in the stadium on Saturday and 450 on Sunday.
There will surely have been many that did not pay to get in, (the FA promised me a free ticket, but did not actually deliver), but I would still expect that over EC$10,000 would be taken. This may only equate to around £3,000 per week but probably this is essential income to the FA. It tends to be the better supported clubs that have the better grounds and so moving the matches elsewhere may be good for the clubs, but not for the SKNFA.
Similarly, the play-offs and finals at the end of the season are liable to draw even larger crowds to the stadium, and as we all know, income trumps competitive fairness at almost every step. I can easily think of a couple of ideas that makes a small step in improving things. The most obvious is to use the positions in the regular season table as a tie breaker rather than goal difference. Other possibilities would be to give a points advantage before the play-offs start and certainly not to allow the final match to end 0-0 and be decided by a shoot-out.
I would also consider changing the promotion play-off from Division One to the Premier, so as only three Division one sides competed along with the second bottom team from the Premier.
Anyway, after my visit to the FA, I went into the centre to look around and have a small meal before moving on. When you drop down the road from the FA offices to the town you start by passing through an area which I would consider normal. A bit untidy, various shops and businesses, and then onto the few notable remaining colonial era buildings. If you head to the right, you can find the ferry terminal for boats to Nevis and the local bus station. If you do not take the turn, but head past the colonial building that is now the national museum, you enter another world.
For a start, the area is pedestrianised, and the paving is even. The shops here are either selling high value products, (a lot of gold and jewellery on sale), or tourist tat. I was going to say cheap, but the price here for a T-Shirt with a St. Kitts slogan on it, (made in Honduras) will not allow that description.
Large signs pointing the way “back to ship” allow the cruise passengers to safely find their way back out of this sanitised area. There were two cruise ships in port that day, and as I started to wander away from that area, both could be seen sailing away. It is apparently unusual for cruise ships to stay in port here overnight and as such the facilities and tours are all based on visitors not spending more than around 8 hours on the visit.
I only had to walk twenty minutes from the centre before I reached the village of Lime Kiln. This is the location of the brewery in Saint Kitts, and also the hospital. To some extent this ground was similar to the one already visited. Depending on your view, it could be better or worse. The land slopes down gently from the brewery to the see, and the pitch has been levelled out from this slope. The intention is to allow cricket to be played here as well as football and this means one of the floodlight pylons is located around 30 yards further beyond the touchline than the others, with an unsurprising knock on effect on the lighting.
In one corner, the vegetation that comes close to pitch has not been cut back – so not only is there no run up for the corner, but the quarter circle in the corner is also overgrown. Some areas of the pitch have lost all sign of grass, while others are need of a cut back as strands of longer grass reach well above the rest. Because the pitch has been levelled, the ground drops away quickly behind one end’s goal.
The advantage this one has over Tuesday night is at the top of an embankment between the goal and the brewery. Here the land has again been levelled, with the section closest to the road used as a car park, and that furthest from the road being a hard court with basketball nets. Between the two is a wooden shack with seats outside and a small veranda in case of rain.
Yes – the ground has a bar. This is independent from the football club and very well used.
The match was not as exciting as the game on Tuesday. The home side, Trafalgar Southstars, had won seven out of eight and were second in the league behind Hardtimes United, (one of the two clubs on Nevis). I am not certain here whether or not Trafalgar is a sponsor’s name. The visitors from Sandy Point certainly have a sponsor, and are listed as Electrofab Sandy Point. They were actually listed under a different sponsor’s name on the original fixture list I was sent.
Trafalgar completely dominated the first half and really should have had more than the two goals scored – one at each end of the period. In particular, I could not explain the one disallowed for offside.
Sandy Point were better organised in the second half, and gave their opponents a game, but generally they got the ball forward and then failed to find their own players. By comparison, the Southstars were far better at coming forward, but had run out of steam in the second period and while threatening to increase the score, the threat was without never realised.
We had a lot of added time, this appears mainly the time taken looking for the ball after it had been kicked down the hill behind the goal. This reminds me of playing as a kid, with only one ball available, so that you always have to go and find it when it runs away, or lands in a neighbour’s garden. At one point, midway through the half, a family of three goats invaded the pitch and ran around a little. Although it took about two minutes to clear them away, this did not add to the time as the ball was missing behind the goal for the whole period.
The Sandy Point goal was scored in the last minute of injury time, a close range tap in after a corner. Had Sandy Point won, they would have been level on points with Trafalgar, but this result moved Trafalgar within sight of the top position two points behind Hardtimes, and with a game in hand. The attendance figure for this one, which I estimated at 40 was about twice that for the game two days earlier. I tried to estimate how many of those in the bar area were watching the game. Clearly the bar was helpful in bringing locals to the ground, while the game probably also helps in bringing people to the bar.
The next football was Saturday. I had accepted the advice not to go to Nevis, so it was disappointing to see a result for the game when Monday came. The alternative was at Dieppe Bay. This is considered to be the furthest point from the capital, which is roughly true. In the capital, one of the few signposts is to Dieppe Bay – but it is signed to the same place both to the left (14 km) and the right (12 km). I made my way to the bus terminal (on foot, about a 40-minute walk from the hotel), stopping at the only coffee shop I had spotted. Its in the cruise tour zone, so priced in US$. I stayed there long enough to have a clear indication that Cheltenham were not playing in the third round of the FA Cup.
I then got the bus to Sandy Point, but I did not fancy the walk up to the fort which was one of the main defences when Britain, Spain and France were competing for which of the islands each would control. Instead I had a look at the sports ground there. This is one of the better facilities although the field is shared by three sports, Cricket, Football and Athletics.
There is a small stand which would be behind one corner flag in a football game. A running track had been marked out, running around the boundary lines of the cricket pitch – so certainly more than 400 metres. I spoke to the couple who run the bar, situated just outside the gate. They were also doing some of the caretaker work on the field. Business is brisk whenever sport is being played, but I was the only visitor around on a Saturday lunchtime with no events. They had a Mackeson beer, so I did partake.
I then walked further down the road, finding another stopping place to have my lunch before taking another bus around to the northern tip of the island. The buses are probably not travelling that fast, but on the narrow roads, they certainly seem to be fast. It reminds me of the lines in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where speed is described as relative to your perceptions, but that regardless of this, Arthur Dent was travelling too fast.
When I got there, Dieppe Bay reminded me most of all of the other villages I had seen on Saint Kitts. Small, mainly residential with a scattering of shops, bars or what they call eateries. It was a short walk from the bus stop to the beach. The beach itself had a small area with the black sands that seems to be the feature of most beaches here. I am guessing the sand comes from volcanic rock, but it looks far less appealing then the white sands of the other islands.
From here, you could see the next two islands to the north, which were the Dutch municipalities of Sint Eustatius and Saba. I wandered back into town and found the field without a problem. There were a small number of home players around, but it was still well before scheduled kick off time
When kick off time arrived, I was getting a little worried. The home team were there, but had not done a team sheet as the referee had not handed them the blank form. There was not much sign of opposition. The referee and one assistant turned up at about kick off time. I was told the away team had at least thirty minutes before the game could be awarded against them, but also that the home side,
Dieppe Bay Eagles, (preceded by the initials TGE, a local engineering firm) would want to get the game played as they would gain a greater advantage by playing and winning well, then if the match did not start and was forfeited. The referee, who was telling me this knew that a forfeit gave the points away, but not how many goals were added to the goal difference. He thought it might be three.
The away team was Molineux Pitbulls. No sponsors name attached and from a village just off the main road. At around 3.30, I could count six players hanging around at their end of the field. I walked over to see whether they were expecting more, and was asked if I could play in goal. I excused myself on grounds of age, although the player who asked me then said he was 55. In fact, their keeper was already there, while the 55-year-old would play at full back. Two more players arrived around about 3.30. They walked in, and my suspicion was they were waiting just out of sight so as the referee could not force a quick start. We actually only kicked off a few minutes before four o’clock – but which time they could submit a team list with fourteen names on it. Twelve were actually at the field, while the last two turned up around 30 minutes later.
Saint Kitts is four hours of time difference from the UK, and actually sits on the meridian for this time zone. At this time of year, the sun is above the horizon for 11 hours of the day, which means Sunrise around 6.30 and sunset around 5.30 p.m. The ground at Dieppe Bay does not have floodlights, although six wooden poles have been erected and the disturbed ground says this is recent – so I would expect the field to get floodlit within the next few months.
One consequence of not being lit is the pitch was the best of those I had seen for Division one games. It appeared well tended and as it cannot be used in the evenings, it does not get as much use as other grounds. Still, the home coach told me that he will be pleased when the lights are up and his team can train on the pitch. A kick off as late as 4 means the light is fading by the end of the game.
Dieppe Bay were relegated at the end of last season and have spent only one season in the top division. I do not have all the tables for the lower division, but I know that Dieppe Bay finished top in the regular season 2015/16, only to lose out in the final four with Sandy Bay and United Old Road Jets gaining promotion.
In 2016/17, both Sandy Bay and Old Road Jets were relegated, while Dieppe Bay and St Thomas Trinity went up. Last season, St Thomas Trinity and Dieppe Bay went down, (although Saddlers actually finished below St. Thomas in the final table. It appears St. Thomas are now merged into the team I saw as Trinity/Challengers). This season, the new promoted teams United Old Road Jets (again) and Mantab (representing the villages of Mansion and Tabernacle) are currently the bottom two.
Onto the game, and I think I was expecting Dieppe Bay to impress from the start, having seen the disorganised arrival of their opposition, but the first half was a closely matched affair. The Eagles were always more in control, but Pitbulls also shared much of the possession. At half time, the score was just 1-0, and just before the break, Dieppe Bay Eagles had a man sent off. If this was meant to give hope to the visitors, the first few minutes of the second period took it way again. A long-range shot surprised the visiting keeper and flew in for 2-0 and the Pitbulls collapsed, with Shawn Dorsette adding a second half hat-trick and Dieppe Bay Eagles rolling on to win by 6-0. Dieppe Bay are still in fifth place, but only a point behind Sandy Point and with a game in hand. Molineux Pitbulls have lost ten games out of ten. Still only behind the St Pauls Youth & Experience team on goal difference, but the Y&E have played only seven.
Even without a bar on site, the match brought out a number of local families and kids to watch, and I estimated the attendance at around 50. At the end of the game, I headed back down to the road. In the main centre and its neighbourhood, all the bus stops are clearly marked, with little shelters. All of them appear to have girls’ names. They also have the useful feature of a USB charge point. Out in the villages it is much less formal. There was someone else apparently waiting for the bus, so I went and stood with him. I said I wanted to go back to Basseterre. After about five minutes, we hailed a bus down on the opposite side of the road, and my companion asked if he was “going through”. The driver said yes. This meant he was going to complete the loop and head to town via the North side, I crossed the road and got into the front seat. My temporary companion had to wait a little longer on the other side, as he was not heading all the way back.
This bus ride meant I had travelled the complete ring using the buses. With a stop on the way up, it cost only 10 EC$. It would have been less without the stop. I could not see much as it was now dark, but the driver pointed out a few highlights, including his mother’s house in Saddlers, where he stopped briefly to speak to a family member. He also mentioned Molineux, about half a mile off the road, so just lights in the distance, and I managed to spot the Ottley’s ground again as we went past. The terminus was conveniently a side street close to the Warner Park Stadium.
Things were in full swing as I arrived at the main stadium, as the second half had just started in the first of two games for the evening. It was not actually the game I was expecting to be on. When I was at the SKNFA offices on the Thursday, I had thought to confirm the times of fixtures as shown on sites such as soccerway, 6 and 8 p.m. on Saturday, 3, 5, and 7 p.m. Sunday. I did not think to question the running order. Soccerway still has the games in the wrong order. The game I could not count saw a surprise 3-1 defeat for second placed Newtown United at the hands of Saddlers.
The Warner Park complex now consists of two major stadiums, one for football, and one for cricket with a raised grass bank between them. On the football side, there is a bit of concrete terracing on this bank. It looks as if it has been there for a long while, but that is deceptive. The bank was not there at the beginning of the century. The football ground also boasts a very good main stand and a few rows of concrete seats behind one goal. The far end is open, with just a wire fence, while that end of the grass bank is not concreted.
The cricket grounds have large and modern stands on the South side, and a smaller pavilion opposite. All of these are recent additions, basically for the 2007 Cricket World Cup. This would have seen the cricket pitch moved eastward. To date, Warner Park has staged 3 test matches and a number of one day and T20 internationals. England have not played in these games. Prior to that, the football facilities would have been used for cricket as well. The concrete steps behind the goal continue along to curve behind the main stand, leaving a small area of grass to one side of the stand with no apparent use.
This, I feel is a sign of an earlier reconfiguration before the stand was built. The stand still appears to be a relatively older feature. It concrete features date it back around 50 years. It is basic, but easily fit for purpose. With individual plastic seats for most of its area, it now seats less than 1000, but probably could have held twice this in the past. The entrance ways are at the top, where there is space to stand behind the seats and two serveries for food and drink, one on each side.
A couple of media boxes and a open plan area which could be used for hospitality sit centrally at the top. The public area below is utilitarian and featureless, with nothing except toilets and a gangway. Even lower levels are accessed from outside or the grass area to the side, and certainly include the dressing rooms, plus I assume other facilities as required for international football. There is another bar and eatery at the far end of the terrace behind the goal. Like the stand, this has its pathway above the steps and seats, and this is the favoured location for those that do not want to sit. A couple of mobile concessions sell popcorn, sweets and drinks here as well.
The pitch was in fairly good condition. It is a grass pitch which appears to get regular maintenance along with the cricket pitches next door. The grass had been cut so short that it appeared to have been manicured rather than mowed. There were worn patches, but considering that in a typical week it can stage five league games at the weekend and three or four midweek games in the Ladies’ League, and that there were heavy (but short) showers on a daily basis, it really did look good.
The Saturday night game was between current league champions and leaders Village Superstars and third placed Saint Pauls United. The earlier result meant that Village had not dropped a place temporarily. I was pleasantly surprised in the first half. The game was played at a good pace and was a fair degree of skill. Saint Pauls took and early lead, but a penalty goal had led to the scores being level at the break. The second half was a disappointment by comparison. It appeared that the players did not all have enough fitness to keep up the pace over the full ninety minutes.
I talked a little to a member of the national team coaching selection, and managed to blag a lift back to the hotel. The Saint Kitts national team merges together local players and some from England, including Omari Sterling-James, a former Cheltenham player who is currently warming a bench for Mansfield. The starting XI for the last game also included Lois Maynard (Salford), Romaines Sawyers (Brentford), Raheem Hanley (Halifax), Theo Wharton and Harry Panayiotou (both Nuneaton), as well as two who play in Trinidad and one in the lower levels in the USA. This means they have very limited time training together. The English based players are generally born in the UK as well. They lost the last game to Canada, which damages their chances of reaching the top level when the Nations League starts for CONCACAF next autumn, but with two wins earlier including a 10-0 thrashing of Saint Martin, (French side), they have an excellent chance of reaching the Gold Cup in the summer. The draw is not so kind however, and they face a difficult trip to Suriname in order to pick up the points.
The next day, I have no less than three matches at the stadium. First up is St Peters and Mantab. Both teams sit one point above United Old Road Jets who are bottom. The locals are not turning up in their droves and just before kick-off, I can count only around 15 people in the stadium. The number quickly doubles, as a few more come in early in the game. I think it had doubled again before half time (around 60), and more than double that at the end. Again, the best football is in the first half and it is 1-1 at the break, but a late penalty gives all the points to Mantab.
Second up is Garden Hotspurs, against United Old Road Jets. This time I think it may be a thrashing as Hotspurs are two up in eight minutes. The first goal is a penalty, and the second passed in by national team player Kennedy Isles. Good to see a player called Steve Archibald player for Hotspurs, although he did not look anything like the Scotsman, I had seen playing in the FA Cup final for Hotspur many years ago.
The two-goal lead was gradually whittled back, Old Road got one before the break, and another ten minutes before the end. This forced Hotspurs, who had been clearly coasting to what they thought was an easy win to step up a gear. This just managed to do the trick with a winning goal coming in the first minute of injury time
The final game was Conaree and Cayon, or SOL I.A.S Conaree against Flow 4G Cayon Rockets as the official titles put it. These are neighbouring villages on the North Coast, and of course this was a repeat of the final series I mentioned before. As Cayon have a decent venue of their own, rather than the basic field of the games I had seen, this is the type of game that could be easily moved from Warner Park. The venue was actually in use on the Monday evening for a reserve league game.
The crowd had more than doubled since the start of the previous game, and I estimated it at around 450. Unfortunately for all of us, Cayon were not Rockets as their name suggested but damp squibs. Conaree were no better especially close to goal and it was clear even before half time that we would probably finish 0-0. Unlucky, perhaps but the final game was not a great advert for football. At least I managed to blag a lift back to the hotel