WHEN the 2015 University of the West Indies (UWI) Games get underway in Trinidad next month, one of the sports that TT students will expect the hosts to emerge from as champions will be the Football tournament.
The UWI Games, contested every two years over several sporting disciplines, always generate significant inter-campus rivalry, and St Augustine’s record at football has been a source of pride for Trinidad and Tobago students.
As part of their preparation for the tournament, the St Augustine Campus squad played a friendly against the University of the Southern Caribbean (USC) on the UWI ground on Tuesday night. Their coach, Hayden Martin was cautious in assessing his team’s chances in the tournament. “We’ve never lost at home,” he reflected, adding, “Every time the Games have been hosted here, we’ve won. Does that mean we’ll win again this year? I don’t know.”
Martin has over two decades of experience working with student footballers; he has been coach to the campus unit for some 25 years, and he also trained St Mary’s College for a number of seasons in the Secondary Schools League. Noting that the Mona Campus won the football title at the last two UWI Games, he is anticipating a tough campaign.
Enough time to work with the players is Martin’s main challenge; St Augustine retained a handful of players from the previous edition (Cave Hill 2014), but the majority, he says, are first-timers. They come mostly from the local colleges- QRC, St Mary’s, Fatima, Naparima, St Benedict’s, with one Dominican and a Barbadian in the mix. They play in a domestic league, but Martin fears the competition is not up to the standard necessary for what lies ahead.
Additionally, Tuesday’s game was effectively the last before the break for exams, leaving precious little time for training between now and their opening match on May 23. He expects Mona Campus to provide their strongest challenge. “They’ve gotten their act together, I think they’re now offering players scholarships from high school, so they are putting a team together, and then they play in the Super League across there, I understand.
“We practice three days a week,” Martin added, his tone betraying a level of frustration. “The turnout sometimes is not good because they have projects. The whole education system around the campus is not really towards encouraging participation in sport; I think that is the difference between the two campuses.”
“We still have a little way to go; I think we need to score a few more goals than we’ve been scoring,” the coach mused, watching his players warming up. “We’ve not been conceding. We’ve been playing well, we’re organised, but we’ve not been able to get the number of goals that I think we should be getting to make us comfortable at this point. We’re creating chances, but we’re not finishing.”
St Augustine will open their campaign against UWI Open Campus on May 23; they play Cave Hill two days later before facing champions Mona on the 27th.