It’s Barking, 1978. We’re playing an away match against the Under 9 Tigers, and I’m in goal, being the team’s only goalkeeper, and despite my repeated request for new kneepads being consistently denied. “Ain’t got the funds, lad” was the constant refrain from the manager, Keith, ever clad in his suede coat, gold chains, and cashmere polo neck: the standard uniform at the time of people who had large status in small towns.
Last minute penalties. Unprotected joints. A striker four years my senior, having been kept back several years in school on account of his behavioural issues. Why his academic progression was reflected by the local football league is and will remain a mystery, but you must accept it for the purposes of this narrative. The point is: he was three times my size, and his legs were pneumatic pistons that could boot my head clean off and barely notice.
Mercifully, he booted the ball, rather than my skull, which was saved from his kinetic anger only by virtue of not being the object on the ground in front of him. The ball soared toward the back of the net, and would have punched a hole through the stand and into the dry cleaners across the main road outside, were it not for my left knee. My unprotected left knee. Which, as it happens, did not impede the ball’s journey into the net.
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