by Michael Findlay
One of St Vincent and the Grenadines’ best footballers, Rudolph “Rudy” Boucher died in the early hours of September 13 at South Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. He was 76 years old.
He was also a former national men’s table tennis champion having won the championship in 1967 and played cricket and football in primary school.
There was a Memorial Service for him in New York last Friday, September 23rd and he will be buried in his native St Vincent and the Grenadines at a date to be finalised.
Michael Findlay
Boucher was hospitalized on August 4 after falling ill. He was released soon after, only to be readmitted to the hospital on September 9, undergo a procedure and be diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, which he succumbed to in less than a week.
“Rudy” Boucher played as an attacking midfielder for Notre Dame in the then First Division of the National Football Championship, and for St Vincent and the Grenadines in the annual Windward Islands Popham tournament, which the country had the distinction of winning on several occasions, including in two years in a row in 1965 and 1966. His inspirational talent played a big part in winning many of those Club and Country titles.
There are no statistics available to confirm the number of goals Rudy scored or created for Notre Dame or St Vincent and the Grenadines.
His career spanned 14 years from 1963 when he joined Notre Dame as a teenager until 1977. He was captain of the national team between 1972 and 1976 and coached the team for four years in 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980. He was long those years when the standard of football in St Vincent and the Grenadines flourished and reached its peak in 1979, culminating in that famous achievement when the team emerged as runners-up in the second edition of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Championship.
1979 was the most successful year for the team led by Boucher. In the second round of the CFU Championship, St Vincent and the Grenadines qualified for the final stage by playing to a 2-2 draw against Martinique in Martinique, then beating Martinique 1-0 in the second leg at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex here to reach the final stage of the tournament played in Paramaribo, Suriname.
Rudy Boucher
There they beat Suriname 3–2 on 12 November, were beaten 2–1 by Haiti on 14 November and beat powerhouse Trinidad and Tobago 2–1 on 17 November to finish runners-up behind Haiti.
Haiti went unbeaten to win the championship with 6 points from 3 games after scoring 4 goals to 1 against for a +3 goal difference.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a virtually unknown Caribbean soccer nation at the time, finished as runners-up with 4 points. They won two of their three games, scored six goals, scored five against them and finished with a +1 margin.
Suriname was third with 2 points and Trinidad and Tobago fourth after not winning a match.
It was then, and still is, the greatest achievement in football history in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Undoubtedly, the coach, “Rudy” Boucher must have had a great influence on the players. He was the most experienced member of the entire squad and did not have the benefit of a large coaching staff as is the norm in modern football. He had to depend on the support of the captain, Elliott “Morie” Millington; Coach, Rudolph Mayers; Manager, Sylvester “Scobie” Taylor, a former national striker; and Assistant Manager, Basil “Bung” Cato who played club football for the Eagles.
Boucher, who left St Vincent and the Grenadines for New York in 1980, took over as coach of the Brooklyn-based Caribbean Soccer Cup team SVG.
The many accolades and awards Boucher has received from several organizations in the country and in the United States are testament to the significant contribution he made to the development of football in St Vincent and the Grenadines and the American diaspora.
During his lifetime, “Rudy” Boucher has been honored by the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Football Association (2009); presented with the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Lifetime Achievement Award VincyCares Diaspora Heritage of Brooklyn, New York (2014); and St Vincent and the Grenadines Masters Breakaway Soccer Organization (2019).
He accepted those Awards with great humility and appreciation, but to the lyrics of Vincentian calypsonian Mystic Prowler (Roy Lewis), who won the title of Calypso Monarch in Trinidad and Tobago in 1998 with his calypso Look Beneath the Surface, any researcher into the life of Rudolph “Rudy” Boucher will have to dig deep below the surface to discover the size of the man and discover the wealth of his football talent.
Boucher played at a time when there was no future in the sport for any youth playing football in St Vincent and the Grenadines and by extension the Windward Islands and the wider Caribbean region. There were no CFU championships, no FIFA CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers, nor any exposure to talent scouts from international football clubs. The best a footballer from these small islands could have hoped for was to be selected for a Windward Islands football team for a rare friendly against Martinique, or at a lower level, to play for the National Team in a friendly against a visiting British navy. Ship or a visiting club team from Trinidad and Tobago like the Maples with some of the best footballers in the Republic of the twin islands.
There was no meaningful football development program. This was limited to the annual 1st and 2nd Division Championships, which were held between June and December at Victoria Park, and were limited to eight or nine clubs mainly from the Kingstown area. Few of the Clubs had any formal structure and many centered around a few key players from a particular area, with the captain being the main architect of their creation, development and progress.
The players were primarily responsible for their training and physical development with the captain coordinating those aspects of the game at club level during practice sessions. There was no Technical Director and very little sponsorship, so members had to pay subscriptions each season to cover the cost of registration and uniforms.
Rudy Boucher
Those players who reached the top of local football did so based mainly on their love for football and their dedication to the sport. There wasn’t even a proper playground in the place. The main field, Victoria Park where every major sporting and social event such as carnival was held, was an excuse for a field. The upper part was level, but there was a big drop in the lower part. It was the joke of many invited football teams. They would come home and tell their friends that the slope was so steep that the team defending the last gate could not see when the opposing team was on the attack, so a member of the club had to stand on the halfway line to shout. he was getting close to the team he was playing for.
It was against such a background that Rudolph “Rudy” Boucher emerged and made his mark in football at club and national level. It was not surprising that he developed into a very skilled player because he was born and raised in the area near Victoria Park, the main playing field in the country at the time which meant that he was on the field in morning, noon and night exercising. his abilities.
The great shame is that there are no videos of football matches from those days to show how skilled Boucher and others of his time were, and it is truly sad that because of this, his talent and skills high are lost in the current generation. from the country’s best footballers.
Boucher in particular mastered every skill there is in the sport. He possessed excellent ball control. He dribbled very well, and his shots on goal were almost always good and wide of the keeper, and you’d think he wouldn’t have seen many of the international matches that are now commonplace on home television or on YouTube.
There are no statistics available to show “Rudy” Boucher’s scoring accuracy or the impact his scoring or lack thereof has had on local and regional football. But watching him play in his heyday was like watching a modern-day soccer match featuring the world’s best players in any of the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga or whatever from top leagues. football leagues in the world.
Boucher’s critics would say he wasn’t as disciplined as he should have been and that he let his hot temper get the better of him. This is an unfortunate trait of many of today’s top athletes. They are geniuses, and their angry reactions to situations are usually their way of expressing disgust at their own mistakes and shortcomings.
In the context of football in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Rudolph “Rudy” Boucher was a genius. He was a player ahead of his time who, given the right coaching and professional management in his youth, could have been rated alongside any of the world’s greats.
