Thursday, September 08, 2005

Sport

Now I'm not one for sport as you may be able to guess.

As a child in my primary school there was always a football game on the go in the boys playground. The boys played football there. Every day. The only exception to this was if they were playing cricket.

However my right foot was always a let-down for me. I suspect for me and for and everyone else. If I kicked the ball aiming for straight forward it would always do one of two things. Either it would unexpectedly shoot vertically straight up into the air (sometimes as high as about 40 ft it seemed) only to then land on the head of someone standing a foot away from me playing for the other team, or it would veer left or right straight into the feet of a naturally gifted ballletic opposing child. I was useless. I couldn't kick with any aim at all.

I was crap at football. Really really crap. There was not one person who in my class at school - possibly even my whole school - who was as useless as me. Looking back I realise that these children must have had to show an amazing amount of patience with me for their age. To be fair they tried me as a defender, a goalie, a midfielder, all to no avail. They never criticised me but I could sense their respectful lack of admiration. They used to try and encourage me by shouting out things like "fantastic" when I managed to not mess something up (which rarely happened) and "Yes" if I saved a pathetic attempt at a goal dribbling in at speeds of 1 mile an hour. This encouragement stopped however every time they had to choose team members one by one and the "captains" would leave me to last - behind Michael McNeil who was (no offence) about three times my weight and couldn't run the length of himself without having to get his puffer out.

Round about P5 (around 9 years old) I discovered the "girl's playground". I've never looked back. There I could play families - I was always the most popular choice for "Daddy" - perhaps to some fine lady I still am...

And the "Girls" used to do handstands in their skirts up against the wall. . .I got nothing out of it except the smug feeling of knowing that if only the "Boys" knew.....

Anyway the point of all this is that even I, with my long chequered relationship with football, felt an amazing gush of excitement when last night at 10.00 pm horns started blaring in Shaftesbury Square and Fred David and I realised that something was going on out there. We flicked Sky News on and there it was - Northern Ireland beat them 1-0. For one night a national shoulder chip was dusted off and a sense of national pride was glimpsed again. Well done lads. Well done David Healey...

For a brief minute I wished I'd never left the "Boys" playground ...

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posted by Freddy @ Thursday, September 08, 2005 Comments: 3

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