A friend of mine and fellow football fanatic e-mailed me excitedly after the game on Wednesday: "I never thought I would see the day...to believe that we could scale the highest heights," he wrote, referring to the Soca Warriors' historic win over Bahrain to secure a place at next year's World Cup.
Indeed, it seemed like just yesterday that I stood in disbelief at the Hasely Crawford Stadium as we squandered what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That was November 19, 1989, ten days after the fall of the Berlin Wall separating East and West Germany. Standing in the stadium that day, I felt as if that wall had fallen on us, crushing every hope of ever reaching football's promised land.
What a wonderful twist of fate and history that we should now qualify for a World Cup hosted in Germany!
The exorcism of the demons of 1989 took 16 years. That can feel like a millennium to someone whose life revolves around sports. But while the wait might have been long and painful, it's certainly been worth it. Ask Dwight
Yorke and Russell Latapy.
Those were the two people I felt most happy for on Wednesday. I can't think of any better send-off for these two outstanding athletes than a trip to the biggest stage in football. To play the game before the biggest audience in their careers has to be the most fitting coronation for two men whose success will inspire every football generation to come.
That said, the beautiful thing about this victory-and the touches weren't always pretty-is that it was a total team effort. While Yorke's inspired play helped set the tone for the last game, everyone stepped up when it mattered.
Back in the home game against Guatemala, the one game I saw live, I saw something that I had not seen in a long time in a T&T squad: a team that played the game with a sense of urgency-the urgency, perhaps, of wanting to close the casket once and for all on the lingering demons of 1989 and the years of frustration in-between.
Few probably knew it at the time, but that Guatemala match was the defining game of the campaign. Faced with a do-or-die situation, the team hung together, dug deep and found a way to win, thanks, in no small part, to a timely strike from the often wrongfully maligned Stern John.
The problem with T&T teams of recent years has been a lack of heart and a defeatist attitude to the game. I saw no evidence of that mindset in the last few matches, especially not in the Bahrain playoff.
This team also showed a level of mental toughness that was missing in many of our earlier campaigns. In fact, I think the Warriors are the first team since the '89 Strike Squad to play with a sense of destiny, unwilling to panic and buckle in the face of adversity.
Nobody personified that more than Dwight Yorke, whose leadership in last Wednesday's game was a textbook example of leading under pressure.
"I am staring [the players] straight in the eyes and they realise how upset I am," Yorke told reporters in Bahrain Tuesday. "The people in the training session see how fired up I am, and that's exactly the mentality I have to get through to these players."
That is what leaders do: they fill the people they lead with the sense that they're capable of accomplishing more than they ever thought possible. Then, they follow it up with positive example, as Yorke did on Wednesday.
It was Yorke, too, who reminded the team that games are settled by players in 90 minutes on the football field, not by fans in the stands or so-called armchair players in online chat rooms.
As someone who has played on winning teams, Yorke must know that championships are won not on skill, but on will...specifically, the team that is able to impose its will on the other usually wins big games.
The Warriors did just that to Bahrain on Wednesday. Ultimately, this was a huge victory for local football beyond the gratification of seeing the Warriors play next year.
Every national player from here on has a reference point from which to channel his or her energies in pursuit of World Cup glory.
Dennis Lawrence's ghost-busting header has provided the therapy to overcome future psychological roadblocks on the path to victory.
It was a sledgehammer to the wall of futility separating us from our destiny.
As the saying goes, there's always a first time. And the first time is always the hardest.