WHEN Hubert “Junior” Groves left Jamaica in 1982, he was one of the island’s most promising young players. Twenty-eight years on, he has returned as a master of futbol.
Groves now 49 years-old and a Canadian citizen, is the owner and technical director of Master’s Futbol Academy with over 30 registered players under his tutelage.
The former Harbour View and national sweeper was in the island for a few days with his family and the Sunday Observer caught up with him.
Groves, or the “Jamaican Beckenbauer” as he was affectionately called while in Jamaica because of his comparison to the German sweeper Franz Beckenbauer, said the lessons learnt in Jamaica made him more capable of teaching football at the highest level.
Said Groves: “What I found is that not many coaches can develop players around the world, and I think I’ve been given that gift and this is where it came from. I want to train players, not coach on a sideline.
“I train the top players in Canada and those that are spit out and discouraged. They come to me and I train them and they go back into the national system,” Groves revealed.
According to Groves, his ability to develop players stems from his own shortcoming as a teenager while playing Minor League for Harbour View as a 13-year-old.
He said the opposing team’s coach singled him out as the weak link on the team.
“I remember him telling his players to go down the weak side. That’s my side he was talking about. That coach was right, but he put something in my head. Once he said that, I said to myself, ‘do what my parents taught me to put the effort in, and I won’t make somebody call me weak again’,” said Groves, who has been a pastor since 1992.
“I put in the work and by age 17 I broke into the National Premier League (NPL) team,” said Groves.
He was part of a victorious Harbour View team and had some epic battles with Boys’ Town in the early 1980s. He left the island after losing to the Red Brigade in 1982 but was voted Player of the Year.
“In 1982 I left as the Player of the Year to Cheney State University in Philadelphia… after we went to the finals with Boys’ Town… myself and Mark Salmon (of Camperdown fame).
It was a remarkable achievement coming from a defender, but he was no ordinary defender. He was as skilful as any attacking player around.
Groves was renown for his amazing bicycle kicks which he often used as a way of playing the ball back to his goalkeeper. At the time it was not deemed a foul to pass the ball back to the goalkeeper, and he did it in style.
“There is a passion in football that I think is missing, which is the entertainment part… I’m an entertainer. I believe that when people came to watch me at the National stadium, there is something that told me that they pay money to come and watch me,” said Groves.
“People pay hard-earned money to come in and you must perform. I tried to use my performance to excite the crowd and break down the opponent,” he added.
“There was one other player like that in Allan Cole. He and I were sitting in the dressing room for a Jamaica game and he looked at me and said, ‘Is not you dem come to watch, is me’. He is the only other player I know that thinks football is not only a game to play and win,” said Groves.
“If I’m playing against a team and the first thing they see is me bicycle-kicking a ball from half-line to my keeper, it kind of sets in their minds that ‘I am playing against a normal sweeper’,” Groves explained.
One person who received those spectacular back passes was goalkeeper Donovan Hayles, who coached Groves at the Minor League level, then captained him in the NPL.
“He was a tremendously skilful player, very influential at the back and could go forward,” said Hayles, the current coach of Harbour View
“Unfortunately, it cannot be proven, but if he hadn’t migrated he would have become the greatest sweeper this country has seen. He was compared to Beckenbauer, you can ask Carl Brown or Deigo Gordon,” said Hayles.
“People talk about Dougie Bell, but he was way ahead of him”.
Groves, who represented Wolmer’s Boys’ in the Manning Cup competition and was part of the team that won the Walker Cup Knockout title in 1976, said his passion for football basically killed his social life and left him without a girlfriend.
“After matches I would go home while my friends would go to the parties. My girl was football. I slept with my minor league socks, my jersey on one edge of the bed, my boots at the other end, and I hugged my ball.
“I became a master of the ball and even today… if I put the ball on my head, I can run the whole field with it,” he boasted.
After migrating to Canada to stay with his mother, Groves said he ended up playing alongside Dutch legend Johan Cruyff in the Canadian League.
“My mother applied for me in Canada and I ended up playing professionally there. If you remember Johan Cruff, he and myself were the only two imports in the Toronto Blizzard team — that’s when the league folded after playing one year,” he pointed out.
Groves laments the state of Jamaica’s football, citing the need to get into the head space of the players as the raw talent is very much available.
“I’ve been around… and I know how good Jamaicans are. I know our talent level, that’s why we excell in track and field.
“It is an individual sports. Can we turn that around in a team sport? We have to have the psychology behind it. We have to have that confidence level where we lift everybody on the field. We must stop the arguing, the constant putting down.
“That’s what I do right now with my academy. I have to help those players to get the Jamaican agility by designing drills for them,” he noted. “They don’t have it naturally, but they have the psychology and the facilities.”
Groves, who stopped playing at age 25, believes it was God’s will that allowed him to give back to his community through the church.
“If you cut sports away from people it will get them on the streets doing things we don’t want them to do. And that’s the reason why that spiritual link after the Lord kicked me out of football and put me into the church so that I can link those two together. The scripture says physical exercise profitted little,” he said.
Meanwhile, Groves’ niece, Brook McCalla, 21, who accompanied him to island, was hoping to pledge her allegiance to Jamaica over Canada, but was told the senior team was no longer active because of the present financial crunch.
Said Groves: “She has to make a decision now between the Jamaica national team and the Canadian national team.
“Unfortunately, we heard about the senior team and the funding. We know there is a financial crunch everywhere, but it was upsetting to hear that because she was here to make that decision,” he said.
McCalla, a graduate of the University of Buffalo, is being recruited by the Canadian national team.
“They asked me if they could take her to Boca Roton with the national team because they want to convince her to play for Canada.”
Meanwhile his son, Matthew, 21, also want to don the colours of his father’s birthplace.
Said Groves: “He doesn’t want to be playing for Canada, he wants to play for Jamaica, but I don’t know if this financial crunch is going to change his mind.
“He definitely wants to play in Jamaica. They grew up with all the bedtime stories being about me in Jamaica”.
Groves is now back in Canada as the demand for his coaching skills doesn’t allow him too much free time.
What if, will be the words on many persons’ lips when they talk about one of the island’s most gifted footballers in Junior Groves.
Nobody knows what the future holds, but Groves was guided by the one person who knows, God.
“They don’t understand how I gave up soccer, but when you do something spiritually, nobody understands,” he said.