THE CLASS OF THE
20th CENTURY
PART 8: THE IAN
CLAUZEL STORY
RETURN OF THE
"DREAD DRIBBLER"
By Garth Wattley
Sports Desk
Express
January 7, 2000
Page 57
Standing there in the Queen's Park Savannah with his bow legs arching
slightly, Ian Clauzel does not look like a man under strain.
But
then the former Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) standout speaks and
the illusion is destroyed.
"Yuh
mind if I smoke?" he asks.
"This coaching is plenty stress.
It is so much responsibility."
To
the gathering of Mucurapo Senior Comprehensive teenagers who are awaiting his
instructions, he is just the coach - for the second year - of their Under-16
team.
Nowhere
in a Hall of Fame for senior footballers would the name Ian Clauzel figure; his
career lasted seven years before it was curtailed by injury in 1984.
In
schools football, however he is something of a legend.
And
perhaps because of the brevity of a career that promised so much, he is also an
enigma.
He
played just two seasons of schools soccer, 1977 and 1978.
The
mere sight of Clauzel set him apart.
A
shock of dreadlocks raised eyebrows and the ire of the establishment.
Even
in the restless Seventies, a schoolboy Rastafarian was revolutionary.
In
the 1978 season, Clauzel's dreadlocks wee to land him in the middle of
controversy when he was included in the national Under-19 team - at the
insistence of the Football Association.
That
led to the resignation of coach Roderick Warner and his entire technical
staff. Clauzel's radical look was not
the only thing working against him.
In
1977, he was playing for Mucurapo Senior, which was new on the football block.
Together,
Clauzel and "Compre" had to break new ground.
"I
love the school," he says. "I
think I owe a lot to Mucurapo because that is where I made my name."
And
what a name.
"Skill
for skill, his style was very unorthodox," says Clayton Morris.
In
the late 1970s, Morris, the former national "Strike Squad" captain,
was part of the North Zone powerhouse John Donaldson Technical Institute side.
"You
never could push your foot and touch the ball when Clauzel had it because he
ran with it between his legs," explains the defender. Even if you tackle
him, you would foul him."
Clauzel,
elusive and unpredictable, was the marquee name in an exciting side in which
his strike partner Eric While and midfielder Emmerson Dubisson wee also
outstanding.
"Trailblazers,"
is the way Patrick Nash, a member of the Mucurapo management team, describes
the unit captained by Novell Gittens.
A
senior division side in '77, they won the Barclay's Bank Knockout Trophy. But in Intercol of '78, Clauzel and company
probably had their finest hour.
Ironically,
they ended as 2-1 losers to John D in the North Zone Intercol final.
The
18,000 fans in the Queen's Park Oval saw a classic contest distinguished by
Clauzel.
"That
was a beautiful game, man," Clauzel recalls. "From since that time I haven't seen the standard reach that
high."
John
D eventually came from behind to win on goals by Dale Hinds and Harmon
Lucas. But it was the Clauzel strike
that few have forgotten. "The best
goal I ever scored," he says.
He
remembers the play.
"The
ball was coming to me just over the half-line and I take it like this," he
says, demonstrating the half-turn and takedown, the movements smooth and easy
as ever, "I hit it one time from about 35 yards and it was in the back of
the net."
Clauzel
and White also managed to hit the post but could not pull the game back after
John D took the lead. Clauzel got fan
mail after that game. But there was
little else to show for his efforts.
The
years since have been a huge anticlimax but the reasons have never been quite
clear.
"He
was very, very skilful but very slightly built," observes Clive Pantin,
himself a former player and, in 1978, the Fatima College principal. "He could be marked out of a
game."
Morris
said, "He was offered a (US) scholarship but refused to cut his hair. If he had taken that opportunity, he could
have made the breakthrough."
Clauzel's
reaction to the suggestion is no less interesting.
"I
lost confidence in the football system," he offers. "There was a lot of bias in the
football at that time, especially at the national level."
Then
he adds, philosophically: "I feel what is for a man is for a man. I does just deal with Life as it
comes."
But
it is clear that the old memories die hard.
Those relating to his controversial selection to the Under-19 team for
that Concacaf tournament in Honduras are particularly harsh.
He
remembers the cold stares he received when, with the money his mother had
scrambled together, he turned up for training - only to be told of the
resignations.
"The
talk was that I was too untidy to play for the national team. That was an embarrassment to me. They just did not understand the Rastafarianism."
Nowadays,
he is now close-shaven, the locks sheared.
"You
don't have to be dread to be Rasta," he declares, sounding like Morgan
Heritage, "I just wanted a change in my life."
But
it does not escape him that well-paid players now abound in world football,
dreadlocks and all.
And
as he recalls his years after school, there is more pain.
"People
used to mention I would be playing here, playing there, and I did not know
anything about it.
"A
lot of people made money off me," he says. And then the timbre of his voice rising shrilly, he asks:
"The only person who didn't make money off me is myself!"
But
now it is time to return to his charges.
And he fires off this parting shot.
"I
try to encourage a lot of them to dedicate themselves to their soccer, because
right now there are opportunities."