Good, Sports!

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

(Extract from November by Thomas Hood, 1799-1845)

To which might usefully be added “No chance of getting off sports due to rain, fog, sleet or snow”. 

I used to have great hopes of November.  I must have been one of the few children who would get up on a school day and look out of the window in the vain hope of finding particularly inclement weather.  I was usually disappointed.  This wasn’t because I loved sloshing to school in sleet or snow or fumbling around in fog.  It was purely to do with outdoor sports.  In fact, on any other day, my heart was gladdened by the autumn sunshine.  It was just on those days when we were due to be out on the sports field that I irrationally hoped for freak weather.

I have mentioned before that I was not one of life’s keen sportsmen in my schooldays.  This is not to say that I disliked all sports.  I didn’t mind basketball much and I could quite tolerate badminton.  Even five-a-side football was just about acceptable, provided it was in the warm, dry environment of the gymnasium and not the wet, cold, muddy grimness of the playing field.  To enjoy mauling around in mud you really need to really enjoy the game you are playing and I really didn’t enjoy football.  Thinking about it, I didn’t really care for cricket either.

I learned, fairly early on in my school life, that there are those to whom sporting prowess comes naturally and there are those who are not really safe to be let out on their own.  I fell into the latter category.  Therefore, in the pecking order of sporting ability, at the top would be those who were playing in the school team and their acolytes, and these would have the bulk of the P.E. Teacher’s attention.  In the middle would be those who were able but not particularly skilful, who still enjoyed a kick-about and who might reasonably hope to play for the team someday.  And then, at the bottom, there was us.  By ‘us’ I mean those who were too fat, too inept, too bone-idle or too crippled by some chronic condition, to ever play football to a level that would not be regarded as laughable by right-thinking men and women.

Considering this, it occurred to me that the term ‘P.E. Teacher’ was something of a misnomer in my day.  You see, thinking about it, I cannot recall actually being taught anything by the series of people who held this post.  I can remember being humiliated and ridiculed, I can remember being shouted and yelled at, I can remember a figure in the far distance displaying his own prowess against ‘the boys in the team’, but I cannot remember being taught anything in all my years of what was laughingly called Physical Education, not that I’m bitter in any way, of course.  I suppose, if I’m going to be fair, we must have been taught how to carry out neck-springs and so on in the gym or else we would all have been in wheelchairs by now, but when it came to football etc., I can’t remember ever being shown any techniques, strategies or even rules!  The assumption always seemed to be that these were somehow automatically passed on to every male, and it was just males in those far-off days, via mother’s milk.  Indeed, it often seemed that way, as all of my friends seemed to instinctively know the rules of football and cricket and so on without any input from the P.E. Teacher.

My memories of football at both Junior and Secondary schools are not particularly fond, as you may have gathered.  A bunch of us who “weren’t much good” would be sent off to some distant pitch on the outskirts of either Anglesey Road Rec. (“The Wreck”) or the Anglesey School playing fields.  Once gathered there, the two most able footballers would decree themselves to be the team captains and would choose their team, one player at a time, from the dishevelled and miserable ranks before them.  I used to regard it as a major triumph if, by some quirk of fate, I was not the last one to be picked, which didn’t happen very often.  Having picked their teams, the captains would then assign positions.  They, and their best mates, would obviously be in charge of the attack and mid-field (I’m trying to make it sound as if I know what I’m talking about here), whilst the rest would be given some vague defensive role, such as“stay back there and keep away from the ball”. The mandatory “fat kid” would inevitably be consigned to goal-keeping duties.

I’m sure there is scope for some interesting research to be done into the psychology of children at that time, and their penchant for always consigning the dangerously obese to a role between the goalposts.  It always happened.  In fact, the pudgy one would usually start to trudge forlornly toward goal without being told to.  No-one, to my knowledge, ever questioned the logic of this.  I can only think that the idea was that sheer bulk would reduce the amount of available space between the goalposts and that this would counter the inevitable lack of athleticism.  If this was the theory, the evidence of our continuing defeats ought to have inspired a re-think.  I had a great deal of sympathy for our overweight goalkeeper and would frequently hang around the goalmouth, chatting with him while the rest of the team yelled and kicked seven bells out of each other at the opposite end of the pitch. 

Defending wasn’t really a problem for me as I was rarely allowed anywhere near the ball.  If the opposition attacked they would be met with our entire team running frantically back to the goalmouth in a desperate attempt to keep me and the “fat kid” out of the action.  From my point of view, a game of football was rather like it must have been for villagers caught up in those 19^th Century wars that Sean Bean did so well – surrounded by brief periods of noise and mayhem all around and then long periods of quiet and tedium.  The only down-side was if, by some catastrophe, like the whole team falling down dead, I gained control of the ball.  This was an accident waiting to happen.  I would immediately be besieged by shouts from all sides, telling me to get rid of it, which suited me just fine.  The problem was that I couldn’t kick straight to save my life and had no idea where to kick it anyway.  Such was my ineptitude that I was quite capable of tackling myself.  If I didn’t actually fall over the ball, or have it whipped away by some smart-alec from the opposing team, then I had no choice but to kick it – usually anywhere in the general direction of ‘away’.  Wherever it went, it was always accompanied by a sort of prolonged groan from my team and howls of delight from the opposition.

All of which brings me to my moment of glory, my triumph on the ‘field of dreams’.  I think it was in Junior school.  We had finally developed beyond the ‘flying wedge’ system of football (one person actually kicking the ball and the rest of the team running immediately behind him) and now occupied assigned positions.  For reasons that are lost in the mists of time, I was playing on the left wing in a forward position.  Perhaps someone with actual talent had been fatally injured or something and I was the only one left?  We were mounting an attack, of sorts, on the opposition’s goal.  Our Centre-Forward was surrounded by opposition players and was desperate to get rid of the ball.  Unfortunately, the only player, unmarked and within reasonable proximity, was me.  Like a fool, I had been shouting for the ball, not because I wanted it or had any idea what to do with it, but because that was what everyone else did and I wanted to fit in.  Bereft of any real alternatives, he passed the ball forward to me.  Miraculously, I managed to trap it, without falling over or tying my legs in knots.  Not knowing what else to do, I began to dribble it toward their goal.  It was like a moment from “Chariots of Fire”, only with footballs, if you see what I mean.  The opposition seemed to be frozen in time and space.  As I ran toward the goal, no-one moved a muscle.  My heart pounded and all around me seemed suddenly quiet and still.  With only the goalkeeper to beat, I struck the ball as hard as I could and watched, in amazement, as it found the back of the goal.  I had done it.  For the first and only time in my life, I had scored a goal!

My triumph was short-lived.  As the more astute amongst you may have guessed, there was a very good reason for the opposition and goalkeeper appearing to be frozen in time and space.  Deafened by my pounding heart, I had not heard the referee blow for offside when our Centre-Forward had passed the ball to me.  It wouldn’t have meant anything to me anyway as I had no concept of the offside rule and still haven’t (something else that we were never taught but were expected to know).  One or two of the more sympathetic souls muttered something about “bad luck” but most of the rest of the team just thought it was unbelievably hilarious.

So, clearly Thomas Hood and I have similar feelings about this time of the year, but for very different reasons:

No mud, no boots, no rain without cease,
No comfortable feel…and probably no member!
No freezing wind, no blue and blotchy knees,
No kicks, no fouls, no dribbling, no howls,
November!

(Whiteland after Hood, 2011)

A version of this article originally appeared in Crutches for Ducks