Elliot ‘Morie’ Millington: Football icon passes

ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES, particularly the East Kingstown community of Sion Hill, were thrown into a state of mourning on learning that national football icon - Elliot ‘Morie’ Millington - had passed to the great beyond.

Millington died on Monday, July 17 in the USA, where he had taken up residence since the late 1990s. He was 68 at the time of his passing.

He is perhaps best remembered as being the captain of the national football team when in 1979 the team shocked the Caribbean by placing second to Haiti in the Caribbean Cup. In doing so, the Vincy squad, underdogs in the finals, beat the more fancied Trinidad and Tobago and host Surinam.

He and the national team would repeat the feat two years later when they placed second to Trinidad and Tobago in Puerto Rico.

The Sion Hill community shared intimately in Millington’s rise in national and regional football.

It was first as player and then as captain of the then formidable Sion Hill Football team that he honed his skills, much to the envy of his opponents.

He was made captain of the national team in 1977.

When his active playing days were over, he took to coaching and was the head coach of the national team in 1992, leading it to the semi-final stage of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers.

But more than that, he was responsible, a colleague said, for making the Sion Hill football team the formidable force it became in local football.

More will follow on this national icon in next week’s issue of THE

VINCENTIAN.

In the meantime, THE VINCENTIAN joins with the rest of the nation, especially the Sion Hill community and the football fraternity in extending sincere condolences to his family both here and in the USA.

May ‘Morie’ forever rest in the bosom of the Lord.