Former national footballer Winston “Twinny Bug” Anglin was among five members of western Jamaica’s football fraternity who died in a car accident in Discovery Bay, St Ann late Saturday night.

The crash revived memories of the January 2001 road death of Jamaican international Steve “Shorty” Malcolm whose car overturned in Trelawny as he and teammate Theodore Whitmore, and a friend Charles Ewan, travelled home after playing an international friendly against Bulgaria at the National Stadium in Kingston.

Anglin, 41 and his friends – Donald Findlayson, 36; Oniel Eccleston, 39; Allan Dexter, 38; and Keith Gentles, 42 – were returning home after watching Jamaica’s World Cup qualifier against Panama at the National Stadium Saturday night.

The St Ann Police said the accident occurred at about 12:30 am when the Nissan Maxima motor car, registered 1351 BU and being driven by Eccleston, got out of control and ran off the unlit Queens Highway before flipping onto one of a number of boulders.

The impact crushed the car, immediately killing the occupants, except for Anglin who was flung from the vehicle. He was rushed to the St Ann’s Bay Hospital where he died.

News of the mishap sent shock waves across the island, particularly within the football fraternity.

“It’s really, really sad. I hardly can find words to describe what has happened,” Jamaica Football Federation President Crenston Boxhill told the Observer yesterday.

Boxhill said that he and Anglin always had a good player/manager relationship from the time he (Boxhill) managed the national team. “As recently as Friday evening we spoke when he called me to ask for tickets to the game,” Boxhill said. “When I heard about it this morning I was brought to tears. It just brought back the whole “Shorty” Malcolm accident all over again.”

First deputy president of the Jamaica Football Federation and president of the St James Football Association George Evans, who spent most of yesterday visiting the homes of the deceased, said the men’s deaths was a tragedy that would be difficult to come to terms with.

“They are all people that I know very well,” Evans said. “Even as late as Friday “Twinny Bug” and I spoke about the tickets for the game. it is a great loss to their families and the football fraternity.”

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Anglin; Findlayson, a former Seba player; Eccleston, who once played for Wadadah; and Dexter were all members of the Hanover Masters Football Club, the current champions of the Western Masters League. Gentles, who operated Greysville Pharmacy in Montego Bay, was one of the contenders for an executive position in the St James Football Association.

League co-ordinator of the St James Football Association, Lilimae Crawford, who said she arrived on the scene about a minute after the accident, told the Observer that she was the person who identified the victims for the police.

Crawford said she saw Anglin lying on his back while the other four men were pinned inside the crushed vehicle.

“A man stopped me while I was driving along the roadway and told me that a car that looked to be coming from the match had overturned,” Crawford said. “When I pulled over I saw “Twinny Bug” on the ground and the other four men in the car with the top of the car crushed down to the bottom.”

According to Crawford, rescue workers took about two hours before they could free the bodies from the mangled wreck.

The section of the road where the accident occurred was recently widened under the Montego Bay to Ocho Rios leg of the unfinished North Coast Highway. The boulders lying to the side are remnants of the hill that once lined the road before it was broadened.

Yesterday, Paul “Tegat” Davis, who played on the national team at the same time as Anglin, told the Observer that he and his son would probably have been in the car if he had known the men were going to the match.

“I gave away the tickets after everybody I asked to take me and my son to the game told me that they could only carry me alone,” Davis said. “My son never saw the national team play, so I wanted to give him the experience.”

Chairman of the Western Masters’ League, Brian Miller, remembered Anglin as a very talented, dedicated and skilful footballer. “He had a professional approach to the game, no matter what level he was playing at,” Miller said.

Anglin attended Cornwall College but never represented the school in the daCosta Cup competition. After leaving school, he played for Montego Bay Boys Club before representing Wadadah and then Waterhouse in the National Premier League. Anglin also played for Village and Invaders of Trelawny.

He was eventually called to the national team and scored one goal in Jamaica’s 2-1 victory over Trinidad and Tobago in the final of the Shell Caribbean Cup in 1991.

However, his career as a national player ended on a sour note after he was convicted in the United States in 1995 of trafficking cocaine. Anglin was held at New York’s JFK International Airport with 103 ballons of the drug in his stomach.

– Observer reporters Vivian Tyson and Carl Gilchrist contributed to this story.