As already mentioned, I have this summer emerged from retirement to resume my footballing career. Persistent niggles and ongoing lack of talent apart, things are going well. Sunday afternoon in the park, six a side, jumpers for goalposts, what could be finer?
I say six a side, but deep in the holiday season from which we are only now starting to emerge, numbers inevitably drop off. I myself was unavailable for several games. And then on my return, last time out, we were down to a mere three versus three: me, a Romanian bloke called Marius and Sacha, lined up against my personal trainer Sapan, Holly and Rebecca.
It won’t have escaped your notice that Sacha, Holly and Rebecca are girls’ names.
Now, much as my wife and daughter dispute (on occasions, would you believe, even ridicule) the claim, I am a staunch believer in gender equality. Not just a believer, in fact, an advocate. A tribune. A champion. A gladiator, if you will, ruched leather skirt and fetching strappy sandals an’ all, sworn to serve the feminist cause. That said, I am also old enough and northern enough to harbour the suspicion that girls cannot properly play football.
Any more than they can correctly identify military hardware. Chatting pre-match to Holly – Australian, 24, a singer-songwriter by trade – I learnt that her full (and real) name is Holiday Sidewinder. “A Sidewinder is a torpedo,” she told me. I thought it best not to correct her – a Sidewinder being, as any chap knows, not a torpedo but a short-range air-to-air missile first deployed on US Navy planes in the Fifties and (having benefited from numerous upgrades too complicated to go into here and which in any case I’d only be copying from Wikipedia) still going strong in numerous air forces around the world.
Advertisement
Holly also told me that she happened to know Sapan’s first and second names, translated from the Punjabi, mean “Dream Little King”.
“I wish you hadn’t said that, Holly,” he groaned. “And I’m very glad you did,” I cackled.
My expectations of a decent game were not high. I’m not proud of this. And, of course, the rational part of my brain knows that girls – some girls anyway, just like some boys – can play football perfectly well. Still and all, we know, don’t we, that reason is not the only criterion upon which we human beings, poor sinners that we are, base our judgments. Custom, practice, vested interest, sheer prejudice … each tend to have their say, too. But, as ever, they shouldn’t. As the ensuing 13-12 thriller proved. Shame on me.
If Holly’s footballing talents remain perhaps – I hope she won’t mind me saying – a little raw, she still did her duty as a courageous and, from my point of view, frustratingly obstructive, goalkeeper. Sacha and Rebecca, meanwhile, were more skilled than most of the blokes who usually turn up and in much better condition than all of us. Except Sapan, of course, but he runs around for a living.
First touch, vision, pace – both women (probably about time I stopped calling them girls) had the full package. Sacha also turned out to be outrageously fit. Which was handy, given my shortcomings in the cardiovascular/aerobic/scampering around department, allowing me to hang back in defence, pretending to utilise my vast experience to spray passes around, dictate the play blah blah blah, while actually sucking down great whooping gasps of oxygen as fast and silently as possible.
Advertisement
Rebecca’s USP was terrier-like persistence. Her side’s winning goal resulted from her outmuscling, then outwitting your columnist, her shot evading his final despairing, inelegant and frankly unconvincing lunge. All the more impressive because it looked to me as if she was playing in heels. Something hard and spiky impacted my shin in one tackle, certainly.
That aside, the game was markedly more civilised than usual. In which respect, perhaps, gender stereotypes did hold true. Everyone encouraged and complimented everyone else, on their own side and the other. Discussions over whether (in the absence of a net) a shot was a goal were conducted in an amicable fashion, no finger-jabbing or whingeing in sight.
Most remarkably, from my point of view, when Marius miscued a volley straight into my face at point blank range, knocking me to the ground, while he just raised a hand by way of the traditional minimalist male apology, and Sapan simply laughed, the three women were all horrified. They couldn’t understand why I got straight back up, insisting – indeed making something of a show of – carrying straight on, nothing more to be said or done.
“Are you all right?” they kept asking me for ages afterwards. “Do you want to stop for a few minutes? How does your head feel? Does your nose hurt?” “Really, I’m fine,” I said. “These things happen.”
“And besides,” I only just managed to stop myself adding, “it’s a man’s game, isn’t it?”