Of Garrisons And Goalscorers

CHAPTER ONE Into The New World From the air Jamaica is a crumpled verdant mass, as though someone has screwed up a green sheet of paper and tossed it onto a shining blue sea where it is slowly unfurling itself again. As you descend through thin wisps of cloud scattered houses become visible along tracks which offer occasional punctuation to the endless jungle stretched across the mountainous landscape. A ribbon of bright turquoise wraps itself tightly around the island's perimeter, fading to a deep, dark blue ocean. Gradually more and more roads come into view and the buildings start to grow more and more dense until you are looking, for the first time, on the great urban sprawl of Kingston. By now you can see the spit on which the airport sits in the harbour, and if you trace it to the point where it meets the mainland then draw your gaze slightly northwards, past the bulk of the houses to where the Blue Mountains rise up from the careworn suburbia, it is just about possible to make out, right at their foot, the most significant structure in Jamaican club football: Harbour View Stadium. The Compound, as it is more commonly known, is the home of Harbour View Football Club, reigning Jamaica Premier League champions and the people with whom I would be spending the next eight months in order to experience life on the 'other side' of the beautiful game. 'And what brings you to Jamaica, sir?' the man behind the desk asks as he thumbs through my passport. He had previously adopted an air of pleasant curiosity as I explained that I am there to research a book on Jamaican football. This had dissipated, though, when I made the mistake of revealing my attachment to Harbour View. His face dropped and the mood instantly blackened, and I am now apparently much less welcome. Clearly not a fan, the man demands why them? Why Harbour View? There are plenty of clubs in the country, so what made me choose them? Weary from the ten hour flight and totally unprepared, I stumble my way through some sort of answer about wanting to see the operations of the current champions but it has little impact, the casual nature of our early rapport has gone for good and the simple formality of stamping my passport is becoming an interrogation. Suddenly I find myself on the defensive, fending off questions about my life at home, my work, my finances. Punch drunk, I stagger from answer to answer until he lands his summation, and his biggest body blow yet: 'So you've just turned up in a country you've never been to before with no actual job, no visa, no return flight date and no letter from the club confirming what you're doing. What did you expect to happen?' When he puts it like that I have to admit he does have a point, and a pretty good one at that. As I will not actually be earning I had therefore just intended get by on a standard holiday visa, perhaps arrogantly hoping that a UK passport might buy me some leeway in a country where Queen Elizabeth II is still Head of State, but clearly life isn't going to be that simple. He continues to ask me questions and explain to me exactly how and in what myriad ways I am in the wrong, while disdainfully flicking through my documents in that way border control officers do when they want you to know that your fate is entirely at their discretion. He soon establishes that I didn't actually work for anybody in particular back home either and have no fixed, regular income- the weight of the realisation that I tick all the boxes of an undesirable keeps growing until suddenly he simply stamps and a page and hands the passport back to me. 'Take care then,' he adds courteously. It had taken only a matter of minutes in the country for me to experience the deep partisanship of the Jamaican people that would become so central to the coming months. Next time, I resolve, I will keep my club loyalties private. Sitting in the back of an airport taxi, the screamed pleas from its engine to be moved up a gear being stubbornly ignored, with a vista of towering cement works on either side, I am hit by a reality that suddenly feels overwhelmingly daunting. At 24 years old, and completely alone, I have