The Cup Tie: Chapter 1

I’m a boy. I like playing football, fixing things and, when it was required, I rewired my parents’ house. As for my favourite subjects at school; they were maths and physics. I felt lucky that I was good enough to play football at semipro level for a club near where I lived.

Just before joining the club property developers wanted our old, rambling and ramshackle ground to be cleared as part of a large housing development, The sort that was going up all around the home counties just outside London. In return they built as a new club. There was a main pitch which had a concrete path running round the outside with a waist high barrier. We had a main stand which housed the dressing rooms and clubhouse on one side of the pitch and, opposite, a smaller stand. We also had a pitch we used for training behind one of the ends of our main pitch. Both pitches were floodlit. Finally we had a car park which accommodated about 50 cars; though spaces were reserved for players and officials. Because a “friend” drove me to some of our matches he was able to park there.

The club played in our county’s senior league. Those who appeared (i.e. the starting eleven and any substitutes who came on) in our first team were paid. Reserve team players weren’t paid but unlike the myriad of players who play for clubs in the park they didn’t have to pay match subscriptions. First team matches could attract a crowd of two to three hundred spectators.

Like any club, from time to time, we had to address discipline problems and there was one 17 year old, who had just played for one of our youth teams and had moved up to the first team, who was threatening to pose us problems. The dilemma we had that he was also extremely talented. Some of the players, including myself, had felt that the day would come when he would need to be disciplined by the club but the standard sanctions of fines and suspensions would not work. The club would need a different approach.

So how about letting this youngster, through the remaining chapters, tell the story as he found it