Canucks celebrate point at MovieTowne

Cana­di­an foot­ball fans, foot­ball acad­e­mies and oth­er spe­cial­ly-in­vit­ed guests bore wit­ness to the Canucks first-ever point in a FI­FA World Cup at a watch par­ty host­ed by the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion to Trinidad and To­ba­go at Movi­eTowne, In­vad­er’s Bay, Mu­cu­rapo on Fri­day.

There were more than a few ner­vous mo­ments for the Cana­di­ans in at­ten­dance for the screen two watch par­ty, but with a wider view of the first edi­tion of the qua­dren­ni­al to be host­ed in three coun­tries, High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Callan said it was a great mo­ment for his home coun­try.

“I was just re­cent­ly in Cana­da, in fact in Toron­to, right by the sta­di­um, and the mood on the street is just elec­tric,” Callan said. “It’s a mag­ic that kind of brings peo­ple to­geth­er, that we all share, and it’s a point of pride for us to be a part of it (and) I’m re­al­ly hap­py to be able to share with our Tri­ni broth­ers and sis­ters.”

In his home away from home, stu­dent ath­letes from Yohance Mar­shall’s Can Bou Play Foun­da­tion as well as a few oth­er schools and sport or­gan­i­sa­tions en­joyed the third match of this year’s World Cup

The for­mer T&T se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al was glad his play­ers got to par­tic­i­pate in the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I think it’s good for the play­ers to ex­pe­ri­ence the game on a big screen. And I think they’re try­ing to bring a very home­ly vibe here to the game,” Mar­shall said.

Look­ing to­ward foot­ball mat­ters, one of a throng of T&T Brazil fans, Mar­shall said the first-ever 48 team tour­na­ment of­fered more op­por­tu­ni­ties for small­er na­tions, in­clud­ing those from Con­ca­caf to an­nounce them­selves on the world’s stage.

“I know a lot of peo­ple will be against it be­cause it’s a change, but I think we have to wait to see how it looks,” Mar­shall cau­tioned. “I think it opens up the door for a lot of dif­fer­ent na­tions to ex­pe­ri­ence the World Cup so, Haiti is back in­to the World Cup. Cu­ra­cao is here for the first time, and it gives some of the small­er coun­tries a path­way in­to the World Cup, and this is one of the great­est shows in the world.”

Mar­shall’s ath­letes en­joyed the watch par­ty, just re­ward for their en­deav­our in train­ing in re­cent weeks.

France sup­port­er Ju­dah Al­leyne of Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, shared that the ex­pe­ri­ence proved to be a bit of last-minute in­spi­ra­tion ahead of Can Bou Play’s week­end match­es.

An­oth­er T&T in­ter­na­tion­al de­fend­er turned coach Radan­fah Abu Bakr was al­so in sup­port of the ex­pand­ed tour­na­ment.

“I’m will­ing to give it a try. I gen­uine­ly be­lieve the World Cup should be ex­clu­sive rather than in­clu­sive, so I was more com­fort­able with the small­er for­mat, but like Qatar, I think we should give every­body a chance to see how the tour­na­ment pro­gress­es and how it pans out,” Abu Bakr said.

“Every­body was scep­ti­cal about Qatar, and that tour­na­ment was ab­solute­ly won­der­ful, so I’m will­ing to give this one a try as well.”

The mood in the screen two the­atre re­mained sub­dued for most of the match but im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly when Cana­da scored a 78th-minute equalis­er, on­ly their third goal in the fi­nals.

The cel­e­bra­tions mir­rored those in On­tario with fans wav­ing their maple leafs as the co-hosts even­tu­al­ly earned their first World Cup point at the fi­nal whis­tle.