Electronic Telegraph Monday 11 March 1996 Football
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11 December 1995:Winners and losers in ranking nonsense
IT ENDS in Paris in a blaze of global publicity, 28 months from now, and gets under way tomorrow afternoon, on a small, impecunious Caribbean island, with such an absence of fanfare that only those thumbing through the small print with a magnifying glass in search of the greyhound results or overseas subscribers to the Dominican Weekly Chronicle are likely to stumble on the outcome.
Game number one of the 635 qualifying matches to be played for football's 1998 World Cup is Dominica versus Antigua, and while it would come as no great surprise if it has bypassed the rest of the universe, it is, of course, driving the islanders here into a frenzy of anticipation. Er, not quite. During the past few days the question, "Are you going to the match on Sunday?" has been met with an unwavering response. "Match? What match?"
Driving around Dominica offers plenty of time to take in the sights, mainly because there are large potholes to be negotiated every 10 yards, or else one of the locals has pulled up in the middle of the road to offload some bananas, or simply have a chinwag with a bloke on the pavement. And as you sit tapping the steering-wheel, your eyes are drawn to posters and billboards advertising Coca-Cola, sand and gravel supplies, parish prayer meetings . . . just about everything bar the forthcoming match.
A telephone call to the Dominican Football Association was scarcely more informative. The number listed in the FIFA handbook rings out unobtainable, but there are two more in the island telephone directory. The first one gives the following message: "I'm sorry, the number you have dialled is out of service. This is a recording." The second clicks you onto another recording, offering advice about what to do in the event of a hurricane.
It is nowhere near such a frustrating exercise trying to get through to the Antiguan Football Association office, because there is no point in trying. They don't have one. Their secretary, Chad Green, works for a shipping company, and when he has the odd spare minute handles his soccer business from there. On Thursday afternoon he said that he was still trying to find out where they were supposed to be staying, and while he was "pretty sure" the game was taking place on Sunday, he had yet to be informed as to the time of the kick-off.
So how many of the 4,000 does he expect to muscle in for nothing? He laughed. "About half."
Mr Green added that the president of FIFA, Joao Havelange, had originally been scheduled to attend the game, but it was now thought he wasn't coming after all. This is hardly surprising, if Havelange has spent most of the week on the telephone being appraised about what to do in the event of a hurricane striking. Incidentally, for those who might be interested, the two main pieces of advice are to keep some rags and cloth handy to prevent water gushing into the house, and to stay sober. They ought to have a recorded message for people trying to get through to the Football Association. Get drunk.
Eventually, the vice-president of the Dominican FA, Ferdinand Frampton, was tracked down to an office at the Dominican Broadcasting Corporation, where he announced his surprise that the Antiguans were unaware of either their hotel accommodation or the kick-off time. However, he did confirm that it did not surprise him at all that the islanders themselves had yet to cotton on to the fact that there was a World Cup soccer match taking place, but that the publicity machine was about to spring into action. This, apparently, will consist of a van with a loudspeaker driving around the streets of the capital, Roseau, 24 hours before the match. The theory behind it is that most people in Dominica will be in town doing their shopping on Saturday, and that it is cheaper and more effective than advertising on TV. Furthermore, despite this rather eccentric marketing technique, Mr Frampton expects around 4,000 people to attend the game, some of whom will pay to get in.
IN theory, they all should, but while the ground - Windsor Park - has a certain rustic charm and a scenic backcloth of lush mountain vegetation, Old Trafford it is not. Mr Frampton said: "The walls are not very high, and you must realise that with a large percentage of our population not earning much money, most people will try to storm the ground. We have to spend a lot of money on police and security."
So how many of the 4,000 does he expect to muscle in for nothing? He laughed. "About half."
It is not only the spectators who barely earn enough money to afford the 10 Eastern Caribbean dollar admission price (about £2.50, half for children), but the players themselves are not likely to be arriving by air-conditioned team bus, and wearing silk suits and designer bracelets. The Dominican team is made up of a few civil servants and one or two casual labourers, but most are unemployed. If everyone was unemployed, said Mr Frampton, it would be easier to arrange training sessions; as it is they squeeze them in, in late afternoon.
If you dropped the directory of Dominican sporting superstars on your foot, it wouldn't leave much of a bruise
It is all a far cry from the last match to be played in the World Cup, the 1994 final in Pasadena, when the combined players' salaries would have swamped Dominica's GNP, and the attendance was substantially higher than Dominica's official population of 71,000.
If you dropped the directory of Dominican sporting superstars on your foot, it wouldn't leave much of a bruise, and the two main stands at the football stadium (which doubles as the cricket ground) are named after two fairly obscure West Indian cricketers, Irving Shillingford, and the former Essex all-rounder, Norbert Philip. As for the stands themselves, they are a bit like the sort of structures you might find at a Fourth Division rugby union ground, with a seating capacity of around 100 each, and air-conditioned corrugated roofing (i.e., more holes than a colander). If they build another stand, it will probably be named after the Dominican-born Phillip DeFreitas, whose own chances of a World Cup winner's medal with England's cricketers are probably about the same as Dominica's football team.
AS for the ground itself, it is the equivalent of the village green with two sets of goalposts, though the playing surface is certainly less bumpy than the road outside. Just to the side of the centre circle is the cricket pitch, which is set on a raised plateau, a good two feet higher than the rest of the playing area. The diagonal slope from corner flag to corner flag makes Yeovil's old pitch look like the home of the Flat Earth Society. The groundsman does his best with what equipment is available - so hi-tech that the local goats are called off the substitutes' bench when his lawnmower is not working.
On Thursday he was sitting watching a dozen or so schoolchildren having an impromptu game in one of the goalmouths, without looking unduly concerned. "They won't do any damage," he said, "and anyway, there aren't many places here where kids can play safely away from the traffic." This may be a World Cup game, but in a family-orientated island like this they have a substantially more balanced view of priorities than most societies.
There shouldn't be any trouble in the game either, assuming that the band strikes up the right anthem for Antigua. In a recent Pan-American Cup game between Honduras and Brazil, there was a 15-minute hold-up when the Hondurans returned to the dressing room in protest at standing proudly to attention for what turned out to be the national anthem of Panama.
The Antiguans are slight favourites to win over the two legs, and go on to play Barbados in the next round, though Dominica's vice-president claims that his team are "on the up" and confident. And if the Dominican footballers are as creative as the artist who designs some of the hotel's brochures here (which bear as much resemblance to the real thing as Batley Town Hall does to the Taj Mahal) then they are definitely in with a shout.
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