12 – MAD MEN 1: THE FAT KID BITES BACK
“The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It is the biggest sin in football to make him do any work.” George Graham
Remember when you lined up at school for the ritual picking of teams? The fear of not wanting to be the last to be picked? And the joy of seeing the fat lad alongside the midget with NHS glasses? Survival of the fittest they called it.
Many of these kids usually caught up with me in later life, having spent a lifetime aspiring to become something important. Throughout my working life I endured a succession of embittered, nasty and particularly short or fat line managers; patient bastards all.
Growing up could be torture; it was tough being fair skinned and blond but it was a lot tougher being fat. Still, at least there is comfort in numbers these days.
Freezing our balls off, whilst the two chosen captains pondered over the remaining choices, Midget Man always got picked first and announced it with an aggressive, clenched fist. In later life this twat ruined our lives with sales targets nobody could dream of.
All that was left was to throw the fat kid the goalie’s bib; small wonder they became embittered and troubled souls in future life. They became society’s time bomb, never able to forget those early years of frostbite and drowning face down in mud.
Bagpuss
The first truly mad goalkeeper I ever came across was from the Swing Gate days; Bagpuss the Psycho. It was Big Al who recruited him and recalls a memorable debut.
Early in the game the opposition had a speculative long range effort on goal that was met with a confident cry from Bagpuss of “wide!”
The ball cannoned into the inside of the near post, rolled behind a startled Bagpuss right along the goal line and hit the other post before Bagpuss dived on it faster than a cream bun. Disaster averted for now.
Bagpuss was to become a key part of the success of the team for many years. He was a volatile soul to say the least, indeed he had a very tetchy relationship with Big Al, never more so than the Sunday morning they ended up falling out in spectacular manner.
Bagpuss and Big Al had been bickering at each other all game and it finally erupted in the smallest changing rooms in Bradford. Imagine two giant seals fighting it out on an ice floe the size of a toilet seat?
I would have laughed but I couldn’t largely because they had both fallen on top of me. They remain great friends today and should really have just moved in with each other.
Name Your Weapon
There was an even more glorious moment of Bagpuss madness a few years later, this time the referee was the victim. Bagpuss had an old fashioned approach to any opposing forward who tried to take the ball around him; if he could not stop him by fair means then foul would have to do.
Having already being booked, he transgressed yet again by flattening the opposition forward. The referee had little choice but to produce the red card and offer Bagpuss an early bath via the bucket of water and sponge.
What followed was priceless. With a very deliberate and precise manner, Bagpuss started to take his gloves off in a measured if dramatic style, finger by finger, looked the referee squarely between the eyes and coolly said. “Will it be pistols or swords Sir?”
As the referee pondered a suitable response – nowhere was this kind of abuse anticipated in the training manuals – Bagpuss nonchalantly slapped him across both cheeks with his gloves and strode off the pitch with the air of a defeated army general.
Now I am not condoning violence towards officials; it was pure theatre. But all goalkeepers are one screw loose.
Sunshine Days
There was another bizarre character who kept goal for one of the last Sunday teams I played for. By this time, I was in my early forties and very few of the lads I had grown up with were still playing, indeed it was only me and Dayks left. The fat lads can be durable.
I had just got back from holiday in early October when I found out that my current team had folded; given my age it looked like that was that as far as football was concerned and Sundays at the garden centre.
And then I got a call out of the blue from Dayks, who by now had played for that many different teams we had lost count. This particular season, the team in dire need of a new Number 9 shirt for an old fat lad, was Prospect FC.
The team originated out of a junior club and this was their first attempt at senior football with a very young group of lads in need of an old head or two. All of a sudden I was sharing a dressing room with lads half my age; it was a mutually beneficial education.
Joining Dayks and I was Tony Brown, who had played professionally for Leeds United and, although he gave the appearance of looking sixty and being as slow as a carthorse, he was the best player in the team by a country mile.
Our regular keeper was the manager’s son, which, clearly was the sole reason he got picked. He was certifiable, had all the kit and copied every mannerism under the sun slavishly, courtesy of Sky, with more hand signals than a Rome traffic cop.
However, his greatest contact with the ball was when he was picking it out of the back of the net. His deputy though was a total freak of nature.
I cannot remember the young lad’s name as I never got over the sight of my team’s goalkeeper wearing mascara, eye liner and black painted nails. He said he was a Goth, whatever that meant, but as long as he kept out of the showers, that was fine by me.
This particular game we were playing was on the other side of Bradford; I cannot be that specific in case one of the occupants of the many prams that day has learnt to read and comes to torch my house.
Our keeper, who was about six stone wet, was constantly being jeered by the amassed ranks of prams on the touchline with assorted and liberally tattooed Kylies, Britneys and Shazneys. Nobody knew why but they were not about to let up.
Eventually he just flipped and screamed out “shut up you slags!!!”
Oh boy we all thought, this is going to kick off now. Sure enough the prams started to advance across the pitch towards a terrified little Goth like a tank advancement. If it had been to the “March of the Valkyries” it would have been perfect.
It was a synchronised assault of peroxide, tattoos and cellulite crammed Lycra tights.
We managed to broker a peace of sorts, the opposition more interested in finishing the game and getting to the pub than the missus’s “honour”. We never saw Goth Boy again, which was just as well as he was crap.
Leave a Reply