Profile: Schoolboy Coach Roy McLean

Coaches, in particular schoolboy coaches, have come under scrutiny in recent times, what with the embarrassing affair concerning Jermaine Lawson being reported for throwing, and Mervyn Matthew, the under-19 player from Dominica being said to have a suspect action.

Today, CaribbeanCricket.com features one Jamaican school boy coach, who talks about his long coaching career in high school, including a bit about the Jermaine Lawson situation.

The name Roy McLean is synonymous in Jamaica with cricket at the secondary school level. With successes at both Kingston College (in two stints) and St Andrew Technical High School, McLean has seen a lot in his 50-odd years as a coach. A former captain of the Kingston College team and Senior Cup player, McLean also used to mingle with West Indies players like Worrell and Rowe, Williams and Dowe.

McLean's coaching actually started while he was still a student at Kingston College. After he left school and started coaching full time, he had what he refers to as a strange encounter with the late great George Headley. "One day he sent for me and we were talking and he said 'Mac, I want you to go and coach at St Andrew Tech'. I said 'but Mr Headley, I'm coaching at KC'. He said 'Mac man, you can find somebody, KC can find an old boy man. You go to St Andrew Tech. They have a whole lot of talent down there and I think you can help them'. Mr Headley said he would speak to Mr Forrest who was the KC headmaster". That he did, and McLean started doing double duty at St Andrew Technical and Kingston College.

Headley was right. There was talent at St Andrew Technical and within two years they had won the schools competition. McLean attributes that to having had good facilities to go along with the natural talent. The facilities were good enough to draw a lot of outstanding players who were attending other schools. McLean said "I had a nursery down there, where a lot of outstanding players used to train. People like Lawrence Rowe, Basil Williams, Herbert Chang, Richard Austin, Uton Dowe. It was a group of as much as 40-50 people. They would come and we discuss cricket and coach them with the St Andrew Tech team and I was happy to see these boys making it to the top. It was a good group of boys. Just basic coaching and getting them to understand the game and playing, you know".

The boys playing cricket today are different from those McLean just described. Although he has maintained his library of books, sadly the current crop of young players doesn't read. "They're reading less. With the television and other things, it sort of pulls them away," said McLean who discussed some of the other differences between the players of yesteryear and those of today.

"When you think in terms of people playing cricket in the 30's and 40's, the fast bowler for example was a man who, when you went to the ground, you knew he was a fast bowler because he was a big strong looking man who didn't laugh with anybody. Over 6 feet. Nowadays you bring in fast bowlers who really can't go the course". McLean mentioned Esmond Kentish and Heinz Johnson who in their late 30's bowled nearly 100 overs between them in a match, this figure being what current players perhaps bowl in a season.

Fitness levels, a topical issue in West Indies cricket today, were better then, than they are now. "Kentish used to run from Spanish Town to Old Harbour every day and used to ride from Spanish Town to Kingston. They were a hardier set of people, they were tougher and they took their knocks, but they were fitter" said McLean.

Not only were they fitter but according to McLean, "they tried to understand the game better. In those days it was a different time from now, despite the fact that we have the modern paraphernalia. In those days, these guys used to sit and talk cricket. Nowadays our youngsters don't talk cricket. You have so many videos for them to see, but they don't look at them".

Kingston College is a school known to have produced many good players, some of whom have gone on to represent Jamaica and also the West Indies. J.K. Holt Jr, O'Neil "Collie" Smith, Easton McMorris, Michael Holding, Robert Haynes, Robert Samuels, and Marlon Samuels are all past students of KC who went on to play cricket at the highest level. At the national level, George Prescod, Marlon Tucker, Derron Dixon, Wayne Lewis, O'Neil Cruickshank and current Jamaica players Mario Ventura and Andrew Richardson all learnt their cricket at the school located just a stone's throw from Sabina Park. Traditionally, Kingston College has done well in the schools competition, while others have faltered and produced some woeful performances.

McLean believes the difference lies in the facilities at Kingston College which can accommodate approximately 30 players for practice at one time in their nursery. Unfortunately, this is not the case for most schools. "One of the problems is that most schools have one ground. When you should start training for cricket season, football is being played and before that it's track... and then you know that those are the glamour sports so cricket gets the tail end". Kingston College has two grounds and therefore does not encounter that problem.

THE LAWSON 'THROWING' SITUATION
Coaches like Roy McLean mould young cricketers into what we see at the national and international level. That being said, the question is often asked about the role a schoolboy coach would have played in contributing to a situation such that occurred with Jermaine Lawson. How could coaches allow that to happen? Wouldn't his coaches have spotted that he was throwing while he was at secondary school? According to McLean, there is a story behind that.

"About 5 years ago, KC played Waterford at Waterford and they beat us, and Lawson got 7 wickets. After the match I went to Lawson's coach and I said to him 'Congrats, you win, I'm not complaining but Lawson is throwing and I think you better look at Lawson, because he has the pace that he'd probably get into the Jamaica team or probably play Test cricket and get embarrassed throwing'. I think he said he recognized it and he was trying to work on it. This is the story. I wasn't really his personal coach. I had something to do with him and I went to Lawson and told him and I said 'Look young man, you bowled well today but you're not straight'. Nobody really followed on to it. I guess probably I didn't have a strong enough voice."

"If I were a West Indian player somebody would have looked at it. But I feel very upset about it because I know that he could have corrected that problem. Even before that he was suspect in my view because we played a U-14 match and he was generating some tremendous pace and we spoke but then you know, it is just allowed to run and the umpires never really looked at it. I remember at that particular match, I was shouting. I was upset. But he has been suspect as far as I'm concerned for a long while and it's very difficult to change from that you know. Not that he can't. I guess the whole thing depends on the amount of work he puts in".

Waterford is located in St Catherine just on the outskirts of Kingston. During the late 1970's and 1980's and continuing up till now, areas adjacent to Waterford saw rapid housing development taking place to deal with the increasing population. McLean feels that this factor has contributed to the demise of cricket at all levels. There are two reasons for this. First, because of the distance that players have to travel, they are not keen to stay behind after matches to talk over the game and to learn more. The escalating crime rate did not help either especially for schoolboys who would have to travel home after dark. The second reason suggested by McLean is that since cricket grew up in Kingston, most of the club grounds are still clustered around one area. When housing was being developed across the Kingston Causeway, no cricket grounds were developed.

The suggestion is that if players could have accessed grounds that were a shorter distance to their homes, the interest levels and the numbers playing cricket would have remained high. McLean is recommending that some grounds be established in high population areas to try and encourage the youngsters to play. This will widen the pool from which selectors have to choose.

Andrew Richardson, one of those whom the Jamaican selectors chose, returned his best bowling figures against Kenya in this year's Carib Beer tournament. I asked Coach McLean if he was there to see Richardson, who is one of his graduates. In addition to admitting that he is not able to relax while watching cricket because he is always looking at it from a coaching perspective, McLean said "there's not anything really for me to see". A sad indictment on the state that cricket has sunk to.

Coach McLean, who for five decades has seen the high and low points of cricket in Jamaica, continues to ply his trade at the school known for its cricketing stars - past and present. He was recently honoured at the Scotiabank Jubilee function to select Jamaica's top five cricketers.

Utilizing modest but adequate resources, McLean is a good example of what can be accomplished if proper systems are put in place. That, coupled with a level of dedication and commitment that is unparalleled, will ensure that Kingston College continues to shine like a beacon on Jamaica's schoolboy cricketing landscape.