Title: The Beautiful Game

Author: G.J. Melling

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

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Sport 32: Summer 2004

Big Match Highlights

Big Match Highlights

The boy accepts marriage, age 32. They've co-persisted for years, he and she, quite snappily. His crew call him dude.

Whassup, dude? Through the side of the mouth, full faced. They're into strategy, the running of biology's clock. They're alarmed.

I coach the Juniors in the very year the boy receives a thin tin cup for Most Improved Player. Justice over etiquette—who blows a whistle for the soundly deaf? My ears hush brightly red.

He is said to resemble a forties film star. It's the eyebrows, the way they almost join above the nose. And that easy demeanour.

But the boy is more than that. He's real, my ear aches. His voice—thousands of miles away—is technology at its most terrible and clear.

Aw, y'know… he says.

He supposes I do, I suppose.

I still kick a ball around, even though unable to quite see it. Aerial stuff is difficult. I used to enjoy heading the ball against the crossbar, that deep kiss of connection.

The boy evokes his grandma's downcast brow, that wounded but unfallen angel. Beware the girl with cleavage, she told me—when the time arrived to tell—and come-to-bed eyes.

The old man raised his eyebrows to their customary twitch. Support who you like, he said. Liverpool or Everton.

page 55

The longer the tooth, the shorter the bite. A necessary vegetarian, I fast the familial feast in the restaurant carpark, smoke my greens. My polished shoes are luminous in the dark. I've upped my market, dressed in black.

My father performs an act of violence on his wife in the early 1950s. Again. He is not a well man at the time. He's happier now, in that jar we cared not what to do with. He's won his cup.

I sway on his shoulders above a cascade of flat hats—fresh nostrils for the fragrance of meat pie, a six of chips, urine on the steps. Forty thousand people with one voice. Its roar that greets a score.

Laughter tickles the cool night air, a comedy of speeches. On my way back inside to the Gents, I contemplate the humour in a piss against a wall.

It's Wedding's Eve, if that's a seasonal suggestion. The crew play soccer on a paddock in Hastings. I cross the ball with the inside of my foot. The boy's ensuing header is expected arrogance, a right of passage through the goalie's groping fingers.

I've been transferred, at my own request. I unmarry as he marries, sub myself off, as you do in Masters' Grade. Shouldn't we all when the energy's sapped? The boy has first-rate training boots, all the way from London.

Her smile runs freely by the dress she bought in Paris. Adjectives are tucked into the hem like shillings under the pillow of a sleeping child. She looks just like she looks, Comme ça.

The crew is over-coached. They telegraph each pass, each movement off the ball. I seek the element of surprise. Show me who you think I am!

The boy thinks for himself. He's discussing wedding suits with the Mafia. They gun me down, just as I knew they would.

They depart their dressing rooms like All Blacks to the tunnel, preen their uniformity, assess their tactics, huddle with straight backs. I bend into a corner, peel an orange. A crowd will soon be opening its throat.

page 56

The aisle is an arc of vineyard, an inswinging corner to the six-yard box. Choreography, a midfield prance, each feint of hip a losing of the conscious, a slyness in the loving of itself. The boy well suits his shirt.

I deliver the epithalamium like a postman with a registered letter. A penalty kick to the back of the net. But that's football.