doing it for the kids:
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Posted: October 17th 2008
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As you get older, it’s generally accepted you get mellower. So mellow, that an old punk like me, someone who then fought the acid house wars with vigour, can start quoting Ronan Keating...and even admitting publicly that the Rollercoaster song is quite catchy.
And what has all this got to do with kids’ football?
Well, two things, as it goes...
The first one, any of you involved in the youth game will have picked up on straightaway. Kids’ football, governed as it is by hormones in a constant state of flux, is even more topsy-turvy than its adult equivalent, be that professional or park.
I haven’t posted here for a couple of weeks, in which Ronan’s rollercoaster has taken me for a right spin. Here goes...
My eldest’s Saturday team.
The one where I’m just a dad. They’ve had a mixed bag of results...often watched from the bench by my offspring, who when called upon has usually been used in a different position to the previous game, reigniting fears that he was returning to the dreaded ‘utility man’ role he thought he’d seen the end of, one which surely Paul Madeley is the only man in history ever to have welcomed.
And yes, it reached the point where me and the boy felt the need to “have a word with the manager”, a lovely bloke for whom I have total respect...but when yer kid’s fed up...well much as I don’t welcome interfering parents in my own team, you have to speak up or forever hold your peace. Jury now out on the resultant discussion...
My Sunday team.
Had I posted 3 games ago, I would have been waxing lyrical about our lads recording their first win in the promised land of Division One...it may have been against opposition currently residing in the “eminently beatable” file, but we did so with gusto and no little skill. 2 games ago, I would have been bemoaning the fact that we’d been held to a draw by one of the other newly promoted teams, one whom we beat twice with something to spare last season, when they finished some 21 points behind us (promotion in kids’ football can sometimes be down to nothing more complicated than ensuring even numbers in each division after a couple of teams have jacked it in).
Last Sunday? Last Sunday was something different altogether. We visited the free-scoring, 100% record-holding, League-leading, reigning Champions. This was like Stoke going to Old Trafford. And all I need to tell you is that we got a 0-0 draw. GET IN!!!!!!
So as we go into our Cup game as favourites this week against an average Div 2 outfit, we’re at the top of Ronan’s ‘coaster...with, if I may mix metaphors for a moment, a banana skin of a fixture which could see us dropping very quickly, screaming lots and holding onto the hand rail for dear life
The girls’ team.
...and this is where the second part of our Ronan-related, more tortuous by the minute analogy comes into play. The bit about mellowing with age.
Well it goes without saying that it’s hard to be mellow watching your kids playing football from the sidelines, be you coach or parent. However, I like to think I’m mellower than most, and indeed in life in general have always supped from the mellow cup.
However, I have to admit something. I could count on the fingers of one hand the people I’ve come across in life whom I genuinely dislike. That’s people I could claim to know in some way, people I’ve had dealings with...not people we think we know and dislike by perception, like Mrs. Thatcher or Marcus Brigstocke.
And one of those people will be standing on the opposite touchline this weekend when the girls take to the field. I’m hoping for cathartic handshakes, smiles that are less forced with each passing minute, and a therapeutic ice-breaking chat at the end of the game. But I’m not holding my breath...