When I was up in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago one of the people I was keen to see was my cousin Gordon and his mother, my aunt Helen. Gordon and I used to be like brothers, going fishing every weekend, playing football, doing the milk rounds and just hanging out with mates. At one stage, I lived with the Geddes family and I will not castigate my aunt in this blog for making me sleep in the hall cupboard – after all it was a large cupboard and the alternative was much less pleasant. Anyway, Gordon and I used to play football as often as we could and luckily there was a pitch right outside his front door in Thornwood Avenue, Partick. Every Saturday and Sunday we’d be down there, me with my silky midfield skills and Gordon banging in goals from all directions. If we managed to get into the same team, we were unbeatable. Although a brilliant attacking midfield player (if I say so myself), my asthma had left me short of breath on occasions and getting into a ‘proper’ team was not an option but Gordon was besieged with requests to play for teams, and he obliged, even to the extent that he played for the Catholic Churches League despite being a Proddie!
And so the other night when I was reading a paper which stated that in London, school or district football teams now have to have police and security people guarding them whilst they play because of the likelihood of violence, it reminded me of an incident when I was watching Gordon play, one cold, wet Saturday morning in a Catholic Churches League game.
I had arrived a few minutes after the game had started and as usual, Gordon was quite clearly the outstanding player on the field. His ability to pass players whilst running at speed was causing havoc with the opposing defenders and soon he’d scored a goal and set up another one. Not long after the restart when Gordon was running with the ball, he suddenly let out a yelp and stopped, losing the ball to an opposing player in the process. A few minutes later the same thing happened. When he had an opportunity to do so, Gordon wandered over to the touchline where I was standing and said, ‘some bugger is shooting me’. I thought he was imagining things but decided to have a look at the crowd watching the game, mainly Catholic priests and other kids of about the same age as Gordon and myself.
Sure enough, the next time Gordon was on a mazy run, one of the crowd took out an air pistol, aimed at Gordon and fired. This time it missed but I moved in closer and the next time he levelled the pistol ready to fire I jumped on him. Well, all hell broke loose as about 6 of his mates jumped on me. I was trying to wrestle the air pistol from the guy whilst his mates were trying to drag me off him and beat me up. After what seemed like an eternity, I surfaced to find about 4 priests breaking up the fight. When they’d separated everybody into little snarling groups, one of the priests asked me why I’d started the fight. ‘Because that little !*%$£ has a gun and he’s shooting my cousin’. ‘Don’t swear at me young man’, said the priest.’ And you’re talking nonsense – none of my boys would do such a thing’. ‘Begorrah Begorrah’.
There was no reasoning with the priests so the only way I thought of resolving the issue was to try and get the gun so I could show them so I lunged at the offender one more time and all hell broke loose again. By this time, the game had stopped and the two teams had become involved with Gordon’s lot trying to get me out of the clutches of several guys intent on beating me to a pulp and the opposing team trying to beat up Gordon’s team. The priests were right in the middle of all this, screaming in Irish.
The game was abandoned. I waited for Gordon’s team so I had some protection and eventually they emerged from the hut which was the dressing room. As they wandered over, I waited for the plaudits to follow. What a hero. What a great guy.
And then Gordon said, ‘What did you go and do that for? We were winning two-nil. Now we’ll have to replay the game.’
One cannot win – even in battle.
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