Trinidad and Tobago sporting heroes Brian Lara and Dwight Yorke visited Trinity School Croydon, London, to mark Commonwealth Day on 8 March 2010. The legendary West Indian cricketer and the former Manchester United footballer represented their country to mark the Day, which is celebrated worldwide on the second Monday in March each year. While there, the pair held cricket and football clinics with boys from the school and talked to them about their respective sporting careers and their roles as sport leaders in a Q+A session.
Trinidad and Tobago sporting heroes Brian Lara and Dwight Yorke visited Trinity School Croydon, South London, to mark Commonwealth Day on 8 March 2010.
The legendary West Indian cricketer and the former Manchester United footballer represented their country to mark the Day, which is celebrated worldwide on the second Monday in March each year
TRANSCRIPT:
Cricket legend Brian Lara and former Manchester United forward Dwight Yorke visited Trinity School Croydon, south London, on Monday 8 March 2010 to mark Commonwealth Day. They spoke to the students on a wide range of subjects after taking clinics in their respective sports.
Lara on Commonwealth Day:
I think it's great. I mean coming to try to teach school was a great experience - you're spending a couple of hours with the kids, they are very enthusiastic. My feeling in terms of the cricket, you've got some very, very talented youngsters. I enjoyed spending time with them, maybe we needed a little bit more time together, hopefully I'll come back. As you said it's Commonwealth day, it's also International Women's Day. And to be ending it meeting the Queen, I think we're looking forward to that as well.
Lara on leadership in sport:
I think it's a gift, I mean to be able to be a good leader you have to be able to motivate people and I've had my share of ups and downs in leadership in terms of the West Indies cricket but it's a great honour to have led the West Indies team. I think for me it was a learning experience because beyond the cricket field there is a lot of life and I'm in my forties now and in charge of a few companies so obviously leadership is important, so I believe for any young person who might assume captaincy of a cricket team or football team I think it's very, very important that they understand and learn about the people that they are dealing with, their team mates around them and know how it is to motivate them.
Yorke on school visit
It's been a fascinating day; I think we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's something that we like to give back to the community anyway and with our sporting achievement this was nice to come back and show the kids and be part of a very enthusiastic school that's interested in sports and it's nice to be associated with them.
Yorke tips Spain to win World Cup; fancies England's chances
It's not an easy competition to win. In answer to your question I think I like Spain. People will say England have a very good chance and they do have an exceptional chance when you compare to what they have done over the years with the kind of talent that they have in the team, one in Wayne Rooney and people like Gerrard and Lampard, they should be winning the world cup, whether they turn up in the competition and play to win, they can play to win in the competition, is a different thing, but for me right now in terms of form, in terms of team, ethics, and the way they are playing as a team and how the Spanish coach has got them playing, I think Spain in any one in football in the world right now, Spain will be the one that is the favourite
Yorke on the best footballer he's played with
I've had the pleasure of playing alongside the likes of Ryan Giggs who I think is an exceptional player and not just that but an exceptional guy as well, you've got the likes of Paul Scholes who for me is probably arguably one of the better players that I have played alongside. And then you can look at people like Roy Keane, David Beckham, I mean the list keeps going on - Peter Schmeichel, as I said I was very lucky and very blessed that I played with such a great team. So it's very difficult to choose who was the best player that I've played with but those players that I've mentioned are the players that I will say are the ultimate players in world football.
Why Yorke left Manchester United
That's not for me really to decide, the manager is the one who makes those decisions. As I said the time I was there, for the four years that I was there, my first year we won within the year. The second year we won the premier league by 18 points, the third year we won the premier league by 16 points, and then you think to yourself why does the manager need to change but this is why he's so good. For years and years so many times he continues to bring in what they say younger blood. In my fourth year I was into my thirties so he probably needed some change, he needed new ideas, new players. They wanted Ruud van Nistelrooy and he came, what an exceptional replacement he was. The manager, he's the one who makes those decisions. As players we would like to stay there for ever, it was not to be but, that's the nature of sport, there will be a time in everyone's life when you have to move on and it was my time to move on then.
Lara on West Indies cricket standards
I think it will be difficult to be as invincible as we were back in the seventies and eighties. Even when I started we were on the decline and we were not playing series 5-0 like we did in the past. I believe that our structure is not good, we do not have the academies to support the youngsters and our team is still built on natural ability and in sport nowadays natural ability is a small part of it. The amount of technology that is happening and how people are learning about the game much faster, I believe we need to head in that direction and there's nowhere on the horizon that I've seen where we have taken that step. We've got, first of all, the West Indies cricket team is the only united force in the Caribbean. We do our politics differently, soccer is different (?) someone else is playing football in Barbados they do not unite and the cultural difference is also very tough for us but I think the main thing is that we need to set up academies and not necessarily every single island having one but I think we should have a centralised academy where all the youngsters come together under good coaches, may be past players, does not matter who the coaches are as long as they are well qualified and get them together working. I believe if we do that then maybe 5-10 years down the line you can see some semblance of what we were doing in the past but at present I think we are just doing what we did 20-25 years ago and hoping that the kids with the talent will come though and we will beat people around the world, and that's not happening as you see...