To say it was my son’s first time playing a football match is to both under- and over-sell the occasion. Underselling, because this birthday party he was attending was not merely his first vaguely organised match – with teams and netted goals and a ref – but very possibly his first time playing with any group of kids in any capacity. But it’s also overselling, because he didn’t really do much ... well, playing.
His football obsession is predominantly down to his love of stats and facts, with his playing limited to the odd casual kickabout with me in our garden. As such, he doesn’t yet have a particularly strong grasp of football’s mechanics, nor the co-ordination necessary to play. Nor does he have proper football trainers, since this burning passion is new enough that we, his miserly parents, haven’t yet committed to the eye-watering expense of such accoutrements. So, there was a tug at the heartstrings watching him gambolling around stiffly in his low-top runners, ecstatically engaged in the match – but wary of the ball going anywhere near him.
The true workout for my heart preceded all that, however, when the refs organised the teams. These were two kind and affable young coaches who work at the sports centre. Their true youth was not apparent to me until some idle football chat on the touchline revealed that neither of them – both Arsenal fans – were alive when Arsenal won the title in 2004. As my weary bones turned to dust beneath my skin, I realised they were considerably closer in age to my son than they were to me.
This might therefore lend forgiveness to their team selection policy, which could only have been devised by an amoral child, and which unfolded in precisely the way it did when I was a kid; namely, two boys selected to pick players one by one from the group until two, ostensibly equal, teams are populated. The issue with this, quite obviously, is that it institutes a ranking system for every child on the pitch, kicking off a fun day’s football with a soul-destroying popularity contest for no reason whatsoever.
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Yes, my son was one of the last picked, which made rational sense given he’d never played a football match before. And yes, my son didn’t appear to mind this at all, so I am likely overthinking the effects of this ruthless system and making it all about my own feelings. I am, doubtless, a soft, modern, overprotective dad, bringing his own childhood traumas to bear on something my son doesn’t care that much about. So, I’ll just say that the sight of him hopping on the spot, hands outstretched, pleading to be picked while being passed over time and again, made me want to shoot someone with a harpoon, and I’ll leave it at that.
At kick-off, a natural hierarchy asserted itself, with the group’s four or five most capable players marshalling the ball around the field, drawing the lesser players to them, like magnets pulling iron filings across green felt. Tactics were moot. Positions, nominal. An aerial view of proceedings would have looked like a series of good footballers trying to evade successive swarms of wasps, with at least 90 per cent of the players on the field following the ball at any one time.
My son was not among even that cohort, however. He preferred to hang back near his own box, hooting and hollering with delight and running in the other direction if the swarm came his way. It’s possible his intent was to provide cover for his goalie, but it’s more probable he didn’t want his joy at being involved to be needlessly tarnished by the reality of trying to actually engage in the action himself.
[ Séamas O’Reilly: I tell my son the truth about footballOpens in new window ]
It was a rough and tumble game, with the usual accretion of scuffed knees and stinging foreheads that an hour-long session of football delivers. There was a little blood, several deployments of sterilising wipes and plasters, and more than a few bouts of tears – but none from my son. I watched his joy at being in the middle of it, never losing heart, slowly gaining in confidence, and all my worries vaporised.
As the final whistle went, he left the field, red-faced and panting, having touched the ball twice in one hour, his eyes alive with pure, unbridled glee.
“Can I [pause for breath] get football [pause for breath] boots?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, my heart fully healed.
It’ll be cheaper than buying a harpoon gun, at least.
