The following article was written by award-winning journalist Desmond Allen as part of his Desmond Allen Interviews series. It was published in the Jamaica Observer on November 26, 2004.

(Part 1)

Indulge me a bit, if you will, in some joyful speculation. If Jamaicans, mere mortals though we be, could turn back the hands of time, who would dare to deny that Lindy Delapenha would be crowned Jamaica’s greatest footballer? Or put another way, if Lindy Delapenha had chosen professional boxing instead of football, and punched as hard he kicked, even Mike Tyson might not have found the cojones to face him in the ring.

Delapenha could have been great in any of almost a dozen sports — add to football and boxing games such as cricket, tennis, athletics, hockey, gymnastics, golf, swimming and diving. But he belonged to a different era and the Master of Time might have purposed it for him to have been the man, if a thorough search of history is undertaken, to have set the stage for large numbers of black British players to go into professional football in that cradle of world-class soccer.

After a phenomenal performance as a schoolboy athlete — and Delapenha tells it with surprising modesty — he was sent to England with the hope of being signed to an English football club. He took with him the unbelievable feat of participating in 16 events over a day and a half in boys’ championships here, forcing the authorities to change the rules to say that no single athlete should take part in more than four events in any one championships.

While Delapenha was serving with the British armed forces in the Middle East after the Second World War, an English football scout saw his soccer artistry and powerhouse kick that was later to dominate newspaper headlines in a country not yet at the time ready to hand out accolades to blackness. If the records are to be believed, and they are not yet challenged, Delapenha is not only the first Jamaican to play pro football in England; he is the first black overseas player and only the second black man to play League football in England.

And in the way fate makes a mockery of men, he would savour the sweet taste of revenge against Arsenal; the mighty Gunners who had refused to sign him and then felt the sting of his boots when he engineered their defeat at Middlesbrough some years later.

Choosing to stay with football, he turned down an invitation to run for Britain in the 1948 Olympics and otherwise might have etched his name alongside Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley in the annals of Jamaican sports history. When he hung up his boots and returned to Jamaica in the 1960s, it was to become one of the legendary sports commentators of the

Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC), the radio and television complex that was established by Norman Manley to reflect the national image to the young nation.

With Roy Lawrence he would take credit for bringing international football to the

JBC screens, even if the audience complained bitterly that they did not want it. Put in there too the fact that he organised theJBC coverage of the biggest games to be hosted by Jamaica up to that time — the Commonwealth Games of 1966. And he had only been three weeks at the station.

He kept his head above the political fray when the

JBC was transformed into a virtual political battleground during the memorable 1970s. And he stayed there until the station changed hands and his became one of the faces deemed too old to remain on television.

A man before his time

Lloyd Lindberg Delapenha was unquestionably a man before his time. Men who are mere spectators to sport should know their limitations, and the interviewer admits to a paucity of qualification to tell adequately the story of this incredible man. Sports aficionados might one day forgive this uninvited intrusion. But it is a story that begs — excruciatingly so — to be told and told now.

Josephine Delapenha probably knew from his strong cry that she had given birth to a special boy on May 27, 1927. His only sibling is his sister, Monica Delapenha, now living in Miami. At the time of Lindy’s birth, Josephine and her husband Lester Delapenha were living at the corner of North and Church streets in downtown Kingston. Both of them, middle-class people, operated restaurants across from each other at Barry and Church streets. Lindy grew up to appreciate his mother’s famous coconut ice cream for which people were said to have travelled from as far away as Savanna-la-Mar and Montego Bay on the other end of the island.

His father owned the popular racehorse,

Master Jack, which was raced at the Knutsford Track in New Kingston, where the precursor to the Caymanas Race Track was then located. Lindy has memories of growing up at Brentford Road near Cross Roads to which his parents had moved. He was six or seven and recalls living in a big front area where he used to kick a tennis ball around. If boys will be boys, he was, and he remembers getting “a big buss ass” from his mother for going into his father’s old Buick motor car and releasing the brakes. Mrs Delapenha was the disciplinarian, he says with he-who-feels-it-knows-it emphasis.

From Brentford Road, it was next to Kensington Avenue where his most vivid memory was of the 1936 hurricane, during which his backyard collapsed into a gully. Luckily the house was spared. The boys in the area used to organise sports days and would sometimes run in spikes on the concrete! He was sent to Central Branch Primary School which was called Convesorium and located at Church Street. He was a small boy, but made the cricket team for the Matcham Cup. J K Holt, who would gain notoriety for his exploits, also played at the same time, as did John Prescod Sr, father of the former commissioner of corrections.

Delapenha recalls with amusement the time when George Headley, the cricket legend and a good friend of his father’s, came to see him play at Lucas, having heard good things about the boy wonder. Calamity struck. Lindy was bowled for a duck with the very first ball that he faced!

His mother didn’t think he was doing well academically at Central Branch and moved him to St Aloysius, a school run by Catholic sisters. Here, too, his talent in sports led to his inclusion on the Cub Scout football team. He remembers his great disappointment when on the eve of his first match the massive 1937 fire broke out in the immediate precincts of the school. Fanned by a brisk wind from the sea, the blaze raced from East Queen Street where it started, leaving massive destruction of property in its path, including the famous Arlington House, Broadway and the convent which housed the nuns who ran the school.

“It was the biggest fire that Jamaica had ever seen and the pall of smoke was so huge we thought all of Kingston was burning down,” he recounts.

The Wolmer’s years

In 1939, Delapenha was sent to Wolmer’s Boys’, again only to excel in sports. He played Sunlight Cricket for the school with people like Allan Rae, Solo Binns and the three Dujon brothers — father and uncles of Jeffrey Dujon, the classy West Indies wicketkeeper. He remembers the fearsome Jamaica College player Jimmy Cameron “whose wicked off spin seemed to come from out of the back of his hand and who took many wickets”. On the track he represented Wolmer’s in the 100 yards and the 200 yards sprints at Class Three in the Championship sports, the forerunner to Boys’ Champs.

The diminutive Delapenha also made the school’s boxing team and, inevitably, the Manning Cup football team. He played one match against St George’s at the end of the 1939/40 season at the age of 12, possibly the youngest boy to play Manning Cup. Clearly size did not matter and Delapenha, playing inside right, scored one of six goals against St George’s at the Sabina Park game.

Mrs Delapenha was visibly perplexed. Yes, Lindy had been outstanding in several sports and she liked the idea that he was so treasured by a prestigious school such as Wolmer’s. But she had sent him to school to learn the academic subjects, and she would exchange his many sports trophies for ‘A’ grades any day. In any event, she was not convinced that anything would come of these many sporting achievements. She had taken him from Central Branch and sent him to St Aloysius, but that did not work. But she determined in her heart that she would try that trick one more time. “Let’s send him to boarding school — at Munro College,” she persuaded her husband.

A phenomenon at Munro

Delapenha was duly enrolled in Munro College and he instantly liked the place. He didn’t seem to mind the cold, misty mornings in the high hills of Malvern which, in its own way, prepared him for the frosty climes of future England. His academic work improved too, though not to any great heights, he admits. But he did well in English language and literature, both of which would serve him well during the broadcasting years of the

JBC.

To no one’s surprise, it would again be sports for which Lindy Delapenha would be remembered at Munro. He played cricket for the school, recalling that twice a year George Headley used to bring down a team called the Aguilar 11 comprising past and present Jamaican cricketers. Headley could not help being impressed.

“I made two centuries — 129 and 126 — against them on two separate occasions,” says Delapenha, relishing the moment. As much as he did well in cricket, he did even better on the track. In 1945 he would do what no other schoolboy had ever done and force a change in the rules governing schoolboy athletics in Jamaica. In the two-day boys’ championships he participated in 16 events — eight heats and eight finals — placing first in the 800 and the mile; second in the 200, 400, 110 hurdles, long jump and relays; as well as third in the 100. At the time his best performance in the 100 was 10.1 seconds.

Astounded at what they had witnessed over a day and a half, doctors at the meet insisted on testing Delapenha to determine for themselves what manner of athlete he was. They came to the conclusion that, henceforth, no schoolboy should participate in more than four events at any one meet, and the rules were changed forever by the Schools Association which ran the boys championships of the day.

The story is also told of another amazing feat involving Delapenha the year before that. Long before the DaCosta Cup, symbol of rural schoolboy football supremacy, was introduced, there used to be a competition for the Olivier Shield between the top two Manning Cup teams and the top two rural teams. In that year these were Cornwall College and Munro College, torrid traditional rivals, and Calabar and St Jago — then known as Beckford and Smith.

The final came down to Munro and Calabar. With 10 minutes to go, the score was Calabar, 4; Munro, 1. Delapenha and his teammates got busy. In one of the most gutsy performances ever, Munro turned the tide. With one minute to go, the score was level at 4-4. And then the referee awarded a penalty to Munro. Goal! And the game ended Munro, 5; Calabar, 4. It was a game that none who watched would ever forget.

Before Delapenha left Munro College, he was decorated in seven school colours — football, cricket, tennis, boxing, gymnastics, hockey and athletics — crowning one of the greatest schoolboy athletes of all time.

In the Senior Cambridge exam the story was different, but he managed to pass two of the five required subjects — his pet subjects English language and literature.

“My life was a life of sports,” he explains. I spent my time trying to make myself more proficient as a sportsman. I had very little interest outside of sports.”

See Part Two tomorrow