Football Time
I was never
that close to my Dad,
He’d had a bad war in the Chindits,
And
fighting behind Japanese lines
Gave him
twenty years of
mood swings
And irrational
bursts of unpredictable
temper,
But one Sunday
afternoon
after the pub,
Out the back on the lawn,
He taught me
how
to trap the ball,
How to kill it stone dead,
How to use your brain and body
Together
in
one movement
And so control
the world.
And when I played
in the street,
I found that if
I dropped my shoulder
And wriggled
my hips,
I had a natural
untaught body swerve,
I could go past players
as if they weren’t there,
I could get
to the bye-line
And put the ball
Onto the centre forward’s
head;
And when I see
a match
today
At a big stadium
or on a recreation ground,
And a player has a number 7
on his back
(Like me and like my dad),
And he traps
the ball, wriggles his hips,
Beats the wing-back
and crosses the ball,
Then my Dad’s alive again,
On our back lawn again,
And I’m 5 again,
And that’s why I like football:
It plays tricks with time.
From one who has zero interest in football: An endearing anecdote!