27 – My Beautiful Reward
It was dark, my hands were trembling, I was clueless as to what I should do and I still had no idea how I had got into such a compromised position; had I been drugged, kidnapped and dropped off in this bleak outpost? No I was not in an Al Qaeda holiday camp but was conducting my very first game as a junior coach on a freezing cold April evening at Adwalton Moor CC which, sounded more like a medieval battleground than a cricket pitch.
Some fifteen years ago I had, almost overnight, become a junior coach but what had made me, in the prime of my playing career – if prime could ever describe such mediocrity – volunteer for this? A lifetime spent avoiding kids and commitment of any sort plus my fear of excitable and volatile mums – yes ladies brace yourself for a mention or two – and here I was starting out as a junior coach.
Bodger Says Goodbye
I remember the committee meeting that somehow led to me volunteering for what, at the time of writing seems like a life sentence. At least if I had got married she would have seen through me by now and escape would have been negotiated albeit with the donation of the house. As cry offs go it followed a typical pattern, in this case, Bodger Lee, coach to the juniors for several years largely due to son Andrew’s participation, had obviously had enough.
In truth that was fair enough too as Andrew had now left the juniors but by leaving this announcement as late as possible all he had done was inflict the maximum downpour of avoidable turmoil on the rest of us with the season barely a month away. As Haighy attempted to restore order and wake a few of the members up he looked around for volunteers, prayed nobody would ask him, and awaited signs of interest for this unforgiving position. And almost involuntarily, like an outer body experience I felt my hand rising above my head to volunteer to take over these kids, – what was I thinking?
I suppose I did, and still do, feel that it’s important to put something back into a sport that you have gained so much personally from. I wish more thought the same but everybody has a personal choice to make here. And so it was that I became a junior coach and exposed myself to the awful reality of the state of the nation’s kids and the idiots and state employed halfwits who control vast sums of money wasted annually ticking boxes, to keep equally half-witted politicians content with reams of meaningless statistics confirming that all is tickety-boo.
Hunted Prey
To be a coach you have to be a skills teacher, mentor, taxi-driver, child minder, therapist and a target for endless mums who want to know why their pride and joy is so totally and utterly useless and why it is entirely your fault. You also have to get used to the day when the nice kid that you used to coach in the juniors is steaming in with a hard new ball on a Sunday morning in poor light, as winter nets hit you again, trying to knock your head off; in truth you are bricking it because this kid is now seriously quick and the prize of sitting the old coach on his arse is at stake here.
So there is no time to pat yourself on the back for helping with his development just get ready to duck yet again as the gold foil lettering sails by. Yes, you should have stayed in bed, you only had to cuddle her once and could now be tucking into a bacon butty rather than trying to avoid a broken bone or two ans some spotty teenager smirking at you prostrate on the floor.
Pastoral Care?
I think most people accept that kids seem to grow up much quicker these days and I saw this first hand when umpiring an early game. Young Sam Stockill looked a bit drained at the non-strikers end and far from his usually confident self so I asked what was wrong.
“Women problems, too many on the go, Coach.” he confessed, somewhat sheepishly.
“But Sam, you’re only 11.”
“Choices coach!”
Sweet irony of ironies as even at that tender age I had this kid down to become my protégé, the Don Juan of his era, and then he went and trained as a priest; clearly this was an early failure on the part of the coach.
Have You Ticked That Box?
Once you are committed it’s hard to avoid the frustration as to why so much responsibility lies with volunteers nowadays as school sport is almost extinct in the state schools. How you maintain a national sport like cricket when only around seven percent of kids have access to it via the private school system is beyond me. So the burden on the clubs is immense and they need support but more often than not it is non-existent.
The response by the controlling body, the ECB, is to make the game even more elitist. How do they do this? Firstly, to get any level of serious financial support you now have to become ECB Clubmark accredited which is another stupid example of bureaucracy gone mad. We have a limited number of volunteers trying to keep the game alive and these dimwits try to enforce a paper chasing exercise that, in my humble opinion, is a load of bollocks.
Without Clubmark you cannot hope to become an ECB Focus club, which is where access to the real financial assistance is nor participate in the national Chance to Shine Scheme – more later. And without a small army of administrators you can become neither. So the game gets ever more elitist; the big clubs can just about cope, the smaller ones give up (and have done so) and some, like us, get by…just. We blunder on regardless doing the best we can, filling in the plethora of forms that land on us if we have to and even the kids laugh at the nonsense of it all.
Watch Out The Boogie Man’s About!
One of the many growth industries promoted by the Nanny State, which ballooned under dear old Tony and Gordon’s tenure, was that of the notion of child welfare; did anybody mention coach welfare? Surely we deserve protection from frostbite, ECB idiots, deranged mothers, deluded dads and endless pointless meetings telling us that just around the next corner is the Boogie Man who will kidnap our kids if we don’t fill in these next ten forms ensuring they keep their pointless jobs for another year.
All we want to do is share with kids our passion and teach them skills that we hope they will enjoy for many, many years and maybe even pass on to others just like we are trying to do. One of the first things you notice when coaching kids these days is that it’s a challenge to get them to move let alone teach technical, coordinated skills like batting and bowling.
School Sport? What’s That? By The Way Here’s A Medal!
For the vast majority of kids school facilities and opportunities are dire and cricket suffers more than most because it is a technically challenging skill to learn. So it’s left to the clubs to provide all this, purely on the back of volunteers for a few hours a week; and they wonder why kids are so unhealthy. Please don’t blame computer games, as I believe kids only resort to these things because there’s nothing else to do. When I were a lad…we took what we experienced at school home to the streets, practised, found a club and practised more. Only school can really start mass participation and we have failed generations.
Teachers these days seem to have neither the time nor the inclination to get involved. It’s probable that they have to fill in a dossier style risk assessment before even going outside if it is raining. At primary level the national curriculum has knocked all competition out of schools, everyone has to win at sports day, no one is better than anyone else, no one can shine and be told they are great. The ones who come last get just as much attention and praise as the really talented kids who have generally simply worked harder and everything is a “team” effort.
Nothing is ever down to the individual who happens to be simply better than the rest and may have carried all the others along. It is as if we are ashamed and/or fearful of talent. This is the same kind of utter, totally useless rubbish that perpetuates much of modern life today and all it does is breed mediocrity. Some people are good, some people not so good. That’s life.
Mad Mums
Perhaps though, one of the most entertaining aspects of coaching and volunteering over the years has been the variety of parents, especially the mums, who you have to deal with year after year. Each year we have a registration day in early March and I can spot the potential nutters with an ease that comes from years of suffering at their hands. You just know who will be attempting to throttle you come mid-summer blaming you for every failing possessed by their precious child. Mad Mums come in all shapes and sizes and I can summarise, without fear of litigation, as I swear, most of this is true.
The Gaggle
Generally this group get together each Sunday morning, equally hacked off with their husbands, as the husbands are of them, hence regular attendance at junior cricket matches under the pretence of supporting their young pretenders. Their kids will never make it as cricketers until Red Rum flies to Mars but it’s a good excuse to top up last night’s wine even if it is Sunday morning.
Often they remain oblivious as to whether their little superstars (who they are supposed to be watching) scored one or two runs, highly likely to be a personal best. The Gaggle has been known to hatch a conspiracy theory that the coach is actually gay but they don’t mind that as he’s got a big house so they concoct a plan to sue him for all he is worth once they can sober up and prove it. The Gaggle often have to be escorted from the ground generally oblivious to the result or what has been going on at all for the last few hours.
The Flirt
Husband number three has just fled so she turns up at the game trying to look twenty again instead of forty although usually ends up looking closer to sixty and smelling like your gran used to at Christmas with that cheap stuff you blagged from the market. The plunging neckline resembles one of those old wishing wells but no way would you chuck a penny down there and get out alive. Coach makes a silent promise to himself never to put her mobile number in his phone just in case the White Bear gets really dull one Saturday night. Even The Gaggle looks more appealing.
The Dreamer
Despite gently suggesting her kid is totally, utterly useless and, as long as the sun keeps rising, is likely to remain so, she insists on buying him more new gear every year than the local primary school’s annual sports budget – making you hope that he will stick at it long enough for his annual hand me downs to fit you eventually as you always wanted one of those Adidas bats.
The coach makes a conscious effort to keep him feeling valued by promoting him in the batting order to see if he actually knows which end of that shiny labelled thing to hold. Secretly you delight in seeing the fear of said spoilt little brat when reality bites and opposition opening bowler commences push off from the boundary edge and destiny charges in towards a very terrified kid making possession of that Adidas bat one step closer.
The Highly Strung One
Generally needs an outlet for lots of stored up tension and, because there’s nothing better on offer, the coach will do. The tightening of her grip around your neck clearly evidences signs of tension – as if you are responsible for her offspring missing what looked like a straight ball to you and leaving all three stumps totally splattered. Bloodshot eyes – hers not yours – stare into you as her nails start to draw blood.
If you could breath you would try to explain the merits of the forward defensive shot. You know he doesn’t really care about one more “duck” as it is now lager time but that she clearly needs help, as you gaze into those manic eyes, unable to even remotely work your charms on this one. Although she clearly does not merit it…you resort to type…and fake it…playing dead that is.
The Desperate One
She’s tried football, rugby, golf, tennis, tiddly-winks and now it is cricket’s turn and you are her last chance to try and save the day and find something her kid may be half decent at. Obviously she is missing the tell tale signs such as painted toenails on said offspring and regular eyebrow plucking sessions. In a quiet moment coach makes note to self that a team of this lad and his “friends” may be good for that grant application to Sport England and tick a box for the ECB Diversity Policy.
The MILF
A fictitious creation and more chance of seeing a Do Do bird at the Villas.
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