A FORMER Orient boss has landed a dream job, coaching a tropical paradise island team.

Tommy Taylor touched down this week in sunny Grenada, ranked 103rd in the FIFA standings, in the Caribbean.

It is far removed from rainy Lincolnshire, where Taylor was last in football as boss of Boston Utd, in the Unibond division.

It makes him the first O's boss to coach an international team and the third to coach abroad a member of a very exclusive club of O’s managers to coach at international level.

He painted a picture for the Guardian of how life in the Caribbean is different from life on the touch-line at a non-league football club.

“Put it this way, I’m sitting in this hotel looking straight out onto the beach. There’s a few catamarans bobbing in the sea.”

Taylor was offered a three month deal with the Grenada team by phone. He has said it was impossible to turn down.

Since he left Brisbane Road in 2001 there has been coaching jobs in New Zealand and Africa too.

Taylor said it had been easy to convince his family of the merits of this latest appointment.

“My wife told me ‘you’re not going there without me.’ She didn’t say that when I went to coach in Tanzania."

Now he has to contend with a language barrier as he prepares his team of part-timers to take on Mexico and the U.S.A, in a competition called the Gold Cup.

“I don’t understand much of what they say, but as long as they do what I tell them, it will not matter” he said.

“Everyone here is ambitious, but it is down to the players on the day. We shall try our best.”

“This is a big thing for me. It’s great to have international management on my C.V. If I can do well here, that’s great.”

The man who took Orient to Wembly in 1999 says he still hankers after what he calls “my team.” He is a fan of what want-away chairman Barry Hearn has done during his 14 years there.

“I was at Orient for so long. Now I always look for their score first. There wouldn’t be a club with Barry Hearn. Maybe he’s done as much as he can, that could be the truth.”

Orient historian in South Africa, Neilson Kaufman, told the Guardian about the other two Orient bosses who went abroad.

Neil McBain went to boss Estudianties De La Plata in Argentina, in July 1949.

Later, Alec Stock left the O’s in 1957 to coach AC Roma, the Italian giant. He returned to Orient eight months afterwards.