EVERALD 'GALLY' Cummings' autobiography is an engrossing recollection of the football life of one of Trinidad and Tobago's elite sportsmen, from his beginnings in Newtown and the East Dry River, Port of Spain to his phenomenal development as a young footballer. He was selected at 15 to play for Paragon and, not long after, was called up for the TT men's team, the youngest player to date to have that distinction.
While still at Fatima College, Gally was contracted to play professionally for the Atlanta Chiefs, in the then-racially segregated US city of Atlanta. Over the years, he moved to the less forbidding atmosphere of Vera Cruz in Mexico and later to the New York Cosmos before returning home to Trinidad to pioneer a professional league, and to further prepare himself for a coaching career.
In writing that reveals a keen awareness of his world and careful appraisal of the individuals that enter his orbit, Gally showcased characters from the tragic Glory Guys' captain Clyde Blondell to the notorious Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier, along with different generations of national and club footballers, and the activity at the foundation of Trinbago's football.
His remarkable personal achievement as a footballer at home and abroad, his successes coaching Glory Guys and other local teams, compared to the disastrous performances of the national team in its qualifying matches in regional and global football during the mid-1980s, made a persuasive case for him, and the TTFA (TT Football Association) eventually offered him the position of men's team coach.
This was his opportunity both to motivate a dispirited team for a game at home against the United States a few days later, and to resurrect the national effort to qualify for the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. To do this required that TT football - its administration even more than the players - moved from its old ways of thinking into the self-awareness of the value of its own style. Gally knew what he had to do.
Many years earlier, as a young professional interacting with footballers from different parts of the world, Gally recognised that the different playing styles they exhibited was the expression of the different cultures from which they had come. The culture that gave TT's game its shape, rhythm, deceptiveness and acceleration was Trinbagonian. But the continuous introduction of foreign coaches had, he complained, convinced the TT team players to adapt their styles.
What the TT team needed, Gally emphasised, was to develop within a culture that was their own. This was what he sought to do. With the help of kaisonians, soca singers and rapso artists, the style soon had a name: Kaisoca. The national team would be the Strike Squad.
By the time November 19, 1989 arrived, the Strike Squad had established themselves as a force in CONCACAF. Players who had been largely unknown became household names. Now, with one game to play, the team needed a single point from their final qualifying match against the US to secure a place in Italy .
Gally deta
