“I am grateful to my father for all the coaching he did not give me.”
Ferenc Puskas
Apart from having kids my life has been a bit of a disaster. Failure at school and jobs I disliked has taken their toll. Playing football ended in a goal mouth scramble in a Reading Combination second division game when my manhood came under swift, clinical surgery from their centre forward’s size elevens.
Watching football was a poor substitute and the childhood memories had begun to fade.
When my son was six he became interested in football and we began to kick a ball around together. When I saw an article in the paper that the local football club where looking to start a junior section, I immediately offered my help.
Within a short time I and a young mum of one of the other boys were running the juniors. We hadn’t a clue what we were doing but agreed that as long as we put the children’s fun first, we couldn’t go far wrong.
We made it up as we went along - everybody pitched in and we all had a great time.
I became a coach for the under sevens and took my FA level two coaching badge. Despite some fantastic people, the course could not be further from my experiences playing football with my friends all those years before.
If this was the way forward, the children’s game was in trouble.
The young mum was great at organising trips and we had a memorable one at the Match of the Day show in Birmingham.
She had hired a coach and one poor lad, was sick before the coach had even left the club car park.
I could sympathise as the only thing I did nearly as much as playing football was being travel sick. I was sick on a cabin cruiser going through a lock on the river Thames at Goring. I vomited into the sea from a pedalo off Weymouth beach, but saved my best for cross channel ferries.
During one such crossing over to France on a dreadful old tub without stabilisers, I was so ill that a priest on board asked my parents if they wanted him to give me the last rites.
When we finally landed my dad picked up my pale emaciated body and carried me to the car, realising that for the first night camping was out and I should be put straight to bed in a local hotel.
I was painfully thin as a child and looked ill even when in the best of health.
I was put to bed in a huge double bed, a tiny white face peeping out over the starched sheets.
When I was being sick I made a noise similar to the death rattle, but my powers of recovery were nothing short of astonishing for a ten year old.
The rest of the family were going down to the restaurant to eat and wondered if I wanted anything bringing to the room.
“Well may be a little soup followed by steak and chips and ice cream,” was my reply. I was back, had come away from the light and ready with my brother to take on the French at football in the campsites of the Loire Valley.
Arriving at the show, we had a lovely lad called Robert Lee who went on to become a very accomplished goalkeeper.
He was obsessed in making sure he got the best value for the £4.50 he had brought for gifts.
He wondered up and down the aisles picking up various objects and asking. “How much is this?” and “Do I have enough left for these?”
He was so focussed on his target that we lost him twelve times. The P.A. announcer was becoming hoarse having to bark out every five minutes, “Will a representative of the junior football club from Gloucestershire please come to missing persons.”
There was a stand at the show and in the centre on velvet plinth was the most famous orb in the country.
It was guarded by two burly security guards who looked like extras from the Sweeney.
I was looking at some old football books on one stall when I was tapped on the shoulder and a little voice chirped, “How much is this?” I gasped in horror as standing behind me was Robert holding aloft the Holy Grail of English football. Behind him was a hue and cry of security guards and red faced men in blazers shouting “treachery!”
For a couple of minutes the nation’s heritage stood in the balance. So great were the repercussions that to the south west a body of men buried deep beneath a hillside under Cornish sod began to stir. The Knights of the Round Table, who managed to sleep through the Battle of Britain, were enquiring of King Arthur, “Is it time?”
The crisis was avoided and the nations treasure was placed back on the plinth and a nice man in a blazer gave Robert a pen and I lent him 62p so he could by a pair of Ryan Giggs shin pads.
Most of my memories of coaching the team from U7s to U18s were about off the field activities. They went through a rather odd, Britney Spears, phase at U12s and 13s.
The team talk at away matches was replaced by a bizarre ritual. A large poster of Britney was fixed to the away dressing room wall and the ghetto blaster was yanked up to a Spinal Tap number eleven setting and they all went crazy, cavorting around the confined space to ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’.
This unusual warm up was far more effective than me droning on about the team’s defensive responsibilities as we went on an unbeaten run.
We held a fund raising night where the boys had to cook, serve and provide after dinner entertainment to their parents.
We held a fund raising night where the boys had to cook, serve and provide after dinner entertainment to their parents.
They did a great job with the spaghetti bolognaise and chose for the entertainment Bingo and the obligatory Britney Spears look alike competition.
Some of the boys took it all a little too seriously with makeup, wonder bras and tight grey skirts. I caught some of the parent’s troubled stares, which appeared to say, “I thought he was meant to be teaching them about 4-4-2 and the off side rule?”
When we finished our last season together at under 18s, before the boys went their separate ways to go to University, to work or gap year trips abroad, they all went on one last adventure together on holiday to Turkey.
Some of the boys took it all a little too seriously with makeup, wonder bras and tight grey skirts. I caught some of the parent’s troubled stares, which appeared to say, “I thought he was meant to be teaching them about 4-4-2 and the off side rule?”
When we finished our last season together at under 18s, before the boys went their separate ways to go to University, to work or gap year trips abroad, they all went on one last adventure together on holiday to Turkey.
I was a bit apprehensive as I met the coach from the airport and as they climbed down from the bus they had brought back with them five tattoos and two black eyes.
Idol worship, cross dressing, being able to make spag bol, tattoos and black eyes, proved that I had done a sterling job in preparing these young men for modern society.
When the boys came home from their foreign jaunts and from University in the holidays. Many of them would come to see my son and meet at our house. They would often go out for a kick about down at the local rec. The sound of them leaving the front door, the laughter and the ball bouncing on the pavement as they ran to their game brings the magic flooding back.
Idol worship, cross dressing, being able to make spag bol, tattoos and black eyes, proved that I had done a sterling job in preparing these young men for modern society.
When the boys came home from their foreign jaunts and from University in the holidays. Many of them would come to see my son and meet at our house. They would often go out for a kick about down at the local rec. The sound of them leaving the front door, the laughter and the ball bouncing on the pavement as they ran to their game brings the magic flooding back.
Paul Cooper
07875 283093
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