From left: Tony Keyes, Leslie Lucas, Frank Morant and Trevor Harris. - file

DIVISION 1 FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS: Members of the Boys' Town football team which won the 1970 Kingston and St Andrew Football Association's Division One title, after a 1-0 play-off win over Santos at the National Stadium. Back row (from left): Lascelles Shaw, Leroy Shaw, Eric Schloss, Theophilus Branch, Winston Hill and Herbert Gordon; middle row (from left): Steve Brissett, Michael Phillips, Archibald Reid, Carl Brown, Franklyn Dennis and Allan Benjamin; front (from left) Lloyd Morgan (captain), Derrick Denniser, Les Brown, Locksley Comrie (manager) and Lloyd Welsh.

On Sunday morning I awoke to the news, thanks to the former Kingston College pacer, Raymond Ford, that Herbert 'Dago' Gordon, and also Leslie Lucas, had died, one from complications of diabetes, and the other, a motor vehicle accident.

I was shocked, not so much at their deaths, but of both men going almost one behind the other, one a footballer and a cricketer of so much skill, the other a footballer who, as a schoolboy, walked in the company of early fame.

Lucas, a goalkeeper, was a reserve and occasional player on the all-conquering Kingston College team of 1964, which defeated a Brazilian schoolboy team.

He was, however, a leading member of the equally famous team of 1965, which also won every schoolboy football title available. That team included the likes of Dennis Johnson, Bunny Fisher, Franklyn Morant, Micky Vernon, Lloyd McLean. Neville Oxford, Trevor 'Jumpy' Harris, Tony Keyes, and Noel Miller.

Gordon, out of Trench Town Compre-hensive High School, was a naturally gifted wicketkeeper at school and a footballer of such precocious talent that many times he seemed, while dancing through the opposition, like a man playing with boys, or like a teacher giving lessons.

As a Major League footballer, wearing the red of Boys' Town, and playing in the company of the likes of Lloyd 'Respic' Morgan, Les Brown, Carl Brown, Theophilus Branch, Las Shaw, Derrick Dennicer, Devon Lewis, and Archie Reid, Gordon was brilliant, nearly as brilliant as Allan 'Skill' Cole, himself a "colour red" representative from Collie Smith Drive.

Dago was like a football romantic, doing all sorts of little tricks with the football, smiling while he was doing them and leaving the opposition dumb-founded, and still smiling as he remembered them long after what he believed was entertainment for the gathering had ended.

Sometimes Dago would miss a golden opportunity to score a goal simply because he was busy doing a trick or two and further bamboozling an already- confused defender.

On the national team, in the black, green, and gold of Jamaica, he was no different, and it sometimes cost him his place on the team.

To some people, he was too much of a showman; to others, many others, it did not matter. To them, all that mattered was that he was playing, and that the football was entertaining.

Sometimes, long ago, when I sat in the stands and heard the local fans talking about foreign stars, of men like Johan Cruyff of Holland and Garrincha of Brazil and how great, how tricky they were, I often wondered what 'Dago' would have been like had he been born elsewhere, had he been exposed to the climate of football like they had, had he enjoyed the atmosphere of football like they had, and had he had the people around him to guide his development and to look about his future.

We will never know the answer to those questions, but what we do know is that what he did, especially in football, we enjoyed it.