As soon as Stefanie and I found out this summer that Grenada’s national football (soccer) team’s name was in-fact the Spice Boyz (with an annual match against the rival St. Kitt’s Sugar Boyz), we put attending a match near the top of our Grenadian bucket list.
Grenada is currently competing in a pool against Guatemala, Belize and St. Vincent & the Grenadines in the World Cup qualifiers. I saw on the FIFA website that they had an match on Saturday and despite the women at the market that morning having not heard about it, we decided to treck down to National Stadium to check-out the action. We arrived just as the national anthems were being played (our first time hearing Grenada’s) and found some seats in the stands.
There were no goals in the 1st half with both keeper’s being on top of their game. There were around 500 in attendance at the game, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you do the math, per capita that’s about the same as 45,000 people showing up to something in Los Angeles.
As soon as the half-time whistle blew, the DJs started blasting the reggae and we bought some delicious fresh-roasted peanuts (they were literally still hot) and a cone of Greanda’s surprisingly delicious Sugar & Spice ice cream. After a string of phenomenal saves by both goalies, St Vincent took the lead in the 62nd minute and the spirits of the crowd started to go downhill after a few missed scoring opportunities.
During a late injury time-out, both team’s whom I’ve dubbed “flag men” started dancing to reggae, doing push-ups, and of course, waving their flags to get the crowd pumped. A timely penalty in the 92nd minute gave us one last chance to equalize and off the indirect kick we headed in a last second goal! I was stoked, we got to have our moment of screaming and yelling with a bunch of strangers from another country – and it was awesome! It reminded me of being in Uganda last summer and watching the USA vs Slovenia game with about 50 other Ugandans on a tiny TV at the soda shack in a little shopping center.
We ended the day with a sunset walk along the coast back downtown to the bus terminal happy to have had a fun afternoon outside of our normal routine.
Grenada's Flag Man