Here is a follow-on to last week’s post about the dire state of grassroots football. Taken from my award winning third book – my mum liked it – this is why my footballing career never rose out of the Sunday morning dog shit.
I’M FRANZ BECKENBAUER!
“Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don’t remember what it is like to be 12 years old.” Walt Disney
I grew up totally obsessed by playing sport. Whilst cricket kept me occupied in the summer, football took over in winter; the two seasons seemed to respect each other in the way one ended and the other started almost seamlessly.
Looking back it is hard to understand the obsession because, as far as football was concerned, I was crap. It was a blessing that St Francis RC Primary had a ‘B’ team because total rejection at such an early age would have been catastrophic. Girls would come later.
The beauty of sport though is it does not matter how good or bad you are as long as you give your very best and have the character and desire to try to do better next time. It is, after all, only a game although we forget this all too often.
There are so many things you gain through sport that enable you to deal with all manner of challenges in later life – even girls – largely because by playing sport you can avoid them.
Growing up all we needed was open space, whatever “kit” we could acquire and for the rain not to come down too hard. It was all about a ball, a few mates and a couple of coats laid down for goals.
We played on a spare bit of grass at the cricket club and occasionally, if we were brave, on the actual outfield itself awaiting the arrival of the groundsman and ready to grab our coats exiting through the closest garden.
In a sense we added sprint hurdling to basic football techniques so you could consider us all-rounders.
The attraction of the outfield was that you could do ten-yard slide tackles without risking slitting your thigh open or ending up in a turd, hidden in the long grass.
Most of us were useless but I doubt whether the likes of Messi and Ronaldo would have been able to dribble on our lunar landscape of a playing surface, covered in weeds, rocks and nettles that would sting you for days.
Rather than idolise the more crafted and skilled players of the age, we all became defenders, keen on mastering the two-footed assault from behind, the achilles heel laceration and the invisible tug of the shirt.
We emulated Ron “Chopper” Harris and Norman “Bite Yer Legs” Hunter instead.
The ball we played with would often be one of those horrible plastic things that could burn a mark on your leg for weeks, which was okay if you fancied Mitre being tattooed on your leg for free.
Very occasionally we acquired a shiny new “real leather” ball that looked great until it actually rained and very quickly dropped to bits, with its bladder escaping like the guts of a wounded animal. Leather clearly meant different things in different countries.
Then one year we actually got real goals courtesy of my best mate’s dad, Billy Stockdale. This was fine until we realised that when son Allan (aka Duck) had to go in, so too did the goal posts. Imagine Man United having to dismantle the goals just because Beckham had to do his homework?
Often it was wet, muddy and cold but nobody cared because we were outside having fun, competing and forging friendships as well…once we had finished fighting.
Although you could not classify us as street kids, we were poor enough that when our equipment failed us, we had to get inventive as Duck described to me many years later.
“One thing I do remember was the time our plastic football burst. We were that keen to carry on playing, I had this bright idea of setting a small fire in the cricket milk crate to try and mould the plastic over the hole.
If you remember the only thing we achieved was to totally melt the milk crate into a plastic puddle and for Jonathon Elliott to grass me up to Billy resulting in a clip round my ear in front of all my mates.
This also delayed milk crate cricket for some weeks until we could nick another one.” Small wonder the local milkman viewed us with constant suspicion.
Even though we had suffered a total meltdown of our equipment, had a grass in the camp and clear parental brutality, little could quench our passion.
And so it was that I convinced my mum to buy me a pair of new boots in my desperate attempt to convert to a striker – rather than be consigned to the defensive lines for the next thirty plus years – aged eleven.
One cold and rainy Saturday afternoon, well after the cricket season had ended, I knocked on Duck’s door complete with brand new Adidas Beckenbauer boots, endorsed by the legendary West German captain, still in their box and Carter’s Sports carrier bag.
They smelt like nothing I had ever sniffed in my life which, at that point, was largely my Dad’s Old Spice. These were the first real leather boots I had ever owned so I unceremoniously dumped my old Woolworths boots in my mum’s bin.
The Woolies boots had three stripes in a copy cat attempt at mimicking the famous Adidas trademark and could be disguised with a heavy application of black dubbing.
However, they were such a bad fit and so non-breathable they gave me blisters and made my feet smell like a sewer. Had they issued these at Guantanamo Bay then that would have been torture; they were like clogs with studs.
Would the new boots change my destiny, oblivious to the fact that old Franz was a high-class defender not a lethal goal machine and I was likely to be neither?
Duck had also got a new pair of the same boots as well and so off we went to the field. Three hours later, two rain-soaked, muddy and crestfallen lads were resigned to the reality that we were still crap.
Taking turns in goals, we aimed shot after shot as each one sliced wider and wider.
We trudged off disconsolate, looking down at our muddy new boots and tried hard to find some blame to attach to them. But we both knew, deep down, that we were hopeless cases, unable to hit the proverbial barn door from two yards.
The Great Wall of Idle
Last Sunday, I decided to tackle the crumbling render on my driveway wall before the sprouting moss became the hanging gardens of Idle. As ever, at least with anything remotely practical, blind optimism led me by the nose into uncharted waters.
With a knowing wink, my neighbour Chris passed his hammer and chisel over the offending wall negating the need for my toffee hammer, smiled and wished me good luck. As he walked off I could hear the suppressed giggles.
Two hours later, I was on my hands and knees, sweat soaked and feeling like singing slave songs as my tools were having as much effect as a toothpick on the Berlin Wall. Time for a bubble bath to revise tactics.
Day Two in my self-imposed penal labour camp was soon aborted. Rain stopped “play” so off to the comforting bosom of the kettle and a Tunnocks wafer just like the cricket season. If I was on an hourly rate things then were not looking good.
I’m not sure the Japs on the Burma Railway would have allowed this nor wasted a bowl of rice on me; they would most likely have thrown me over the edge for being totally useless. It was looking like it could be a long winter with the toothpick.
And then…an Act of God occurred. Jason, another neighbour with a sense of humour especially where useless office boys are concerned, offered me his De Walt power tool. Could this tool use a tool without maiming himself?
Day Three and with throbbing power at the end of my wrist post a quick tutorial, Jason left me to it most likely expecting to return home with a river of blood running down the street. Left alone with a weapon of mass destruction I faced the wall and my demons.
At last, progress despite Hurricane Gonzalo whipping up a sandstorm. Luckily, I found an old set of goggles and marched forward with my vibrating rod once again. This time rain and cold caused play to be abandoned for the day; the De Walt smoked contentedly.
Day Four and let there be momentum. With the local handy man round to do some painting, it was time to show the blue collar lot what us white collar boys were made off.
Four hours later and out of the desert sand I strode, job done, with barely enough energy to fill the kettle. Time to locate the hand creme.
Big Al’s Corner
I was watching re-runs of Cheers the other night and revelling in the wit and wisdom of that classic bar-fly, Norm Peterson, the roly-poly accountant who was a permanent fixture on the end of the bar.
We have our very own Norm at The Scruffy in Big Al capable of views on the world that would confound many a leading statesman.
Only the other evening we had this gem. Our mate Patch (dead-ringer for Cliff) was musing about religion contending that when you are gone, that’s it! No after-life, no nubile virgins, no more beers and no more Berghaus jackets to bore your mates about.
“I just don’t get all that stuff about Noah being 500 years old” said Patch.
“What’s so special about that?” asked Big Al “Dr Who’s twice as old!”
Sundays at The Scruffy…love ’em.
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