Making It Up As I Go Along #420

The World’s Game
The World Cup of Soccer is here again. An odd event. I’m usually drawn to it myself, but I’m not a big soccer fan. In fact, I find it strange that people’s biggest hockey complaints, over the last ten years, have been predominant aspects of soccer. Low scoring... too much diving... too many ties. Hockey hold conferences and debates to search for ways to fix the problems. Soccer is celebrated as the greatest game on earth.

So I can’t demand much change out of soccer. Who am I to say the game loved by more than any other needs to change. But I still find myself puzzled how it has escaped the criticism that hockey has endured.

For a short time, I played soccer. Back when I was a kid, I was put in the city league with all the other thirteen year olds. Many of the kids were also hockey players. I’d been in school with them, seeing them walk through the halls with their hockey jackets. I was expected to give way to these people. Step aside. They were royalty.

And here I am, playing alongside them on the soccer pitch. I wasn’t very good.

Practices had us run. Run around the field. Run towards the goal. Run this way and run that way. Always a good sprinter, but never a long distance type of runner, I’d often have to be prodded along to keep up.

The fine details of the rules of the game weren’t within me. I knew not to grab the ball with my hands. I knew which goal to go for. When there was a throw in and when it was a free kick. But direct free kick versus indirect. Or why sometimes a goaltender would pick up the ball and other times just kick at it as I would... I never understood. This type of thing gave more reason for coaches to yell at me and shake their heads at my hesitation.

My skill came accidently and sporadically. As a defender, I once dove and kicked the ball off an attacker’s foot. He tripped over my foot afterwards and all was accepted. I was congratulated and accepted.

Later that game, the same play occurred and I dove for the ball with increased confidence. I missed the ball, and got the attacker’s legs. And the finite difference... that inch I was too slow to make up... it got me a scolding from the referee and the attacker a free kick. Thirteen year old me took it as failure, and my defensive aggression disappeared.

Blood also caused me to shrink away. I remember a practice where we took kicks at our own net, giving our goal keeper some work. He was one of the leaders. Never shaken and always in command. But on this day, one of the kicks brought his head towards a goal post. And the square block style of wooden post won the encounter... a corner of wood got the best of his scalp... and the always in command, never shaken leader squealed in pain.

A coach poured water over his head and what left the bottle as pure and clean left his hair and showered to the ground red and violently. For me, it was as if I had seen someone’s throat slit there in front of me. Soccer suddenly became dangerous.

I did have good times playing soccer. The majority of the good times came in the form of hockey. My favourite hockey player back then was Guy Lafleur. I always loved watching him fly over the ice, zooming by slower players with flowing blonde hair acting as zipping lines of comic book super heros... those lines that trail Superman or the Flash to show the speedy motion on a static picture. This was Guy Lafleur’s hair... making Guy a real life super hero.

Having long blonde hair myself, and being able to run as fast as anyone, I would run along a soccer pitch dreaming of being Super Hero Guy. But my dreams stuck with the motion of the hair. Maybe if I had dreamed of leaping over defenders with the ball remaining in my possession until I would launch a screaming kick into the top corners of the net... maybe then I’d have been something. But my dreams remained simplistic and it put me on the pitch as a running fool.

I knew where the ball was, and would run towards it, making little jukes and jives along the way so I could feel my hair flutter behind me... the Superman theme song on replay in my mind... and a change in possession of the ball happening several seconds before I would realize. Team mates adjusted to the ever changing play at a moment’s notice... I juked and jived with “da da duh duh daaa, DA Da daaaa” playing in my head.

But one day, I once again became sporadically good. In all previous matches, my presence on the field gave no goal keeper any pause. I’d never hit the net with a kick. But in this game, things came together. I laced one kick high and to the right, and it forced the goal keeper to make a fine stop.

And a short time later, I walloped an even better strike even higher and further to the right... beyond the goal keeper’s reaches... it echoed off of the upper post... inches from my first goal.

Days later, my coach called me at home. Checking to make sure I’d be at the next game. After weeks of scolding and ignoring, he must have felt like he’d finally reached me. He must have believed that he had beaten through the Guy Lafleur dreams and Superman theme song and made me a real soccer player.

But I was not able to make that next game. Nor the game after. My greatest match came in my last game prior to summer vacation. I told my coach I’d be out of town for the next few weeks and the disappointment I heard on the other end of the phone sealed my fate as a soccer player. From my coach’s point of view... in a soccer sense of the phrase... I was dead to him.

I returned from vacation but never re-found the rhythm of that greatest game. And my coach looked down at me. A dedicated player would have found away around summer vacation. Would have dictated the facts to my parents that I would stay home alone, in order to guide my soccer team. I remained... dead to him.

But my dedication was not at his level. And I returned to Guy Lafleur hair dreams and Superman theme as I stayed back from the most intense action, running juke jiving routes and rarely seeing the ball. Playing the world’s most popular game, wishing I was a French Canadian hockey player instead.

MONDAY...
— Depression, thy name is physio. Knee feels okay but I wasn’t able to do the entire treadmill routine at the higher difficulty and, as a result, they want me back on Friday... when originally, Wednesday was to be my last day.
— Evening shift is ok.

TUESDAY...
— Work is long... burger at the chip wagon is great though. A pre-work bike ride was nice but the gears still need some tuning. May be bringing it back to the shop to see if they can smooth it out.

WEDNESDAY...
— Treadmill difficulty is dropped some compared to Monday and I make it fine. More to come Friday... be over soon!
— Nice to see Hawks win the cup. I’m not a fan of the yappy, in your face stuff that a few of them do... but it’s a cool hockey city and Toews is good in my books.

THURSDAY...
— Dentist in the morning. A little cavity. Oh well.
— Work at 1:30. Kind of nice. Gets me home earlier although dayshift awaits.

FRIDAY...
— Work days for physio. Physio takes a good three hours of annoying time. Stupid kid playing with balls... sisters talking to each other from across the room (with me on an exercise bike between them)... just too much stuff.
— Out for a bite and a few drinks with Roz and Phil in the evening. Nice times.

SATURDAY...
— Some PPV UFC tonight. Good fights with good chilli to eat. Before that it was a day of soccer and computer baseball. I did walk to the bar for the UFC... so a half hour of exercise.