Ricky Dakay’s legacy

In my close to two decades in sportswriting, one of the most difficult things I’ve realized is to write about a man who doesn’t want to be written about.

Much has changed in Cebu football since Ricky Dakay took over but whenever you ask the guy, he doesn’t want to take credit.

“I’d rather you write about the others. I just did what I had to do,” he has told me more than once when I tried to broach the topic of his contributions in interviews.

“I’m the luckiest president. I don’t do anything,” he’d say often every time he had to make a speech.

But he isn’t the luckiest president. Cebu football was lucky to have him. Nor did he do nothing. He did everything.

A case in point is Cebu football’s darkest point for which I played a role. The Aboitiz Cup brawl that was seen around the world.

“Gitaw-gan ko sa akong parente sa gawas kay naka-kita sa picture,” one officer told me.

For some organizations and for some people with connections, they’d be busy covering it up or calling in favors from newspaper owners to get the media to hush it up or spin it some way. Or, bar that, they’d try to influence the spin with an irate call. In close to 20 years in the job, I’ve fielded such calls. (Tip to orgs: Don’t make such calls.)

During that crisis in Cebu football, I never heard a word from Sir Ricky. Never even got a call. Never even a text message to spin the story this way or that. Because that is his way.

What he did was to start an investigation with an independent individual in charge that was finished in a week and that had all football fans in the Philippines wishing the rest of the community was as decisive as Cebu football in handling the brawl.

That’s just one of the many things he did for Cebu football. You hear a lot of stories too—secondhand of course—of him dipping into his pocket for the sport. You won’t hear that from him because that’s not him.

And of course, there were those Azkals home games. Did you know the lights at the Cebu City Sports Center were powered by his generator, lest a power interruption occur?

That’s just some things he did as “a president who does nothing,” but I think that won’t define his legacy. I think what will define Ricky Dakay’s legacy is what he did and didn’t do in the last election.

He encouraged people who love the sport to run and he didn’t run. If he did, he’d be a runaway winner.

Let me tell you, in my years as sportswriter, I’ve seen elections of sports groups, and you can just feel that some are up to no good. And in previous coverages of elections in the football association I’ve privately face palmed at seeing people getting elected knowing that they’d be bad for the sport.

Sir Ricky inspired a group of leaders who will put the sport ahead. I pity them though as one incoming board member told me, “Mu-kuot ra ba to si Ricky sa iyang bulsa. Mu-kuot sad ko. Di lang sila mag expect nga pareha mi’g bulsa ni Ricky.”

That is Ricky Dakay’s legacy. And knowing the man, my apologies for putting him in the spotlight that he deserves.