http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmxHIklXnQUMy first abiding memory is of my Dad and his mate Gerry Keogh sitting in the front room drinking beer and shouting at a box emitting flashing colours and strange accents in the corner of our front room in Broadford. One minute they were knocking over their cans of Harp(adorned with scantily clad ladies on the tin),jumping for joy and hugging each other.The next they were prostrate on the ground on the verge of tears. For a two year old it was all too much to take. I ran out into the kitchen and hid underneath the crappy fold-down formica table hanging off the wall and cried out of fright. My Mam picked me up,hugged me and told me everything was alright. How wrong she was. For I had witnessed United coming back from two goals down to draw level at Wembley in the Cup Final against Arsenal with five minutes left on the clock.Only for a bubble-permed Alan Sunderland to score six yards out from a cross from Liam Brady to win the Cup. The date was 12th May 1979(I looked it up).I was two years and one hundred and sixteen days old.Welcome to the world of football.It might take twenty minutes or twenty years but ultimately the team you support will disappoint you.
That same wooden-panelled television set taught me a lot down through the years. It taught me never ever to marry Gail Tilsley because inevitably you'll wind up dead, never put your faith in an RTE produced comedy because inevitably it will be shit and you'll kick yourself for not seeing it coming and most importantly,never enter a fancy dress shop.Once you get in that changing room they will induce you with mind-bending drugs and you'll end up in a mystical land dressed as a fucking Indian chief. Fuck Attractas and Benildus that is where education was at. And I live my life by those rules. They are the fucking rules. Oh yeah.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't spend my entire childhood sitting in front of the telly. Broadford Drive was a great place to grow up. Sure,there were the fistfights usually brought on by someone calling me 'specky four eyes' and my stupid little temper. But the vast majority of the time it was bliss. Long before PlayStations and the humble PC ripped kids imaginations out of their heads, we were left to create our own worlds. When the World Snooker Championship was on telly, we had the Broadford Snooker Tournament. Barry Dunne's front room was 'The Crucible'.Wimbledon?We had the Broadford Tennis Tournament replete with copious amounts of match-rigging that saw plucky little six year old Rob Bulman somehow knock twelve year-old Paul 'Gero' Geraghty out in the quarter-finals. On Finals Day,we had a sale of work on the grass verge overlooking Skippy giving me a good hiding on Centre Court. Four squares of concrete and the truth. There was the Tour De Broadford but sadly no Ashes series. There were inter-road matches between the Drive and the Hill or the Lawn or the Park or the Avenue.We always seemed to win.And no match-fixing has ever been proven with regards to that. At least, thank the Lord we never resorted to playing GAA. That particular code,after all,requires no imagination.
Why the reminiscence I hear you ask? Two fold really. I took my little one on a walk down to the Green pictured above recently. It was unscarred by any signs of any football code whatsoever.Three trees now stand were the Phone Box End jackets-cum-goalposts used to lie. The kids just sit in getting rotund. It's sad. For every eight year-old me that used to run around on that grass believing in his head he was Bryan Robson,there is an eight year-old glued to a PlayStation actually being Wayne Rooney. Prostitutes,luckily,are not included.
Now while Robson might have once been caught in a ladies toilet up to no good with a Sky Sports anchorwoman, he at least waited until he was at Middlesbrough and their manager at that to get involved in scandalous ways. He didn't do it on my time,oh no.When mega-rich Italian clubs waved their lira at him,he cocked a massive snook in their direction and stayed loyal to the 'romance' of a not particularly good United side which was even worse than the current rabble.
Wayne Rooney has no excuse. He's in it for the money. And he isn't man enough to admit it. It's all about the filthy lucre. Myself and thousands like me would have happily signed over their right testicle to even get five minutes on the hallowed turf at Old Trafford or Goodison or Anfield (delete where applicable) but were nowhere near good or lucky enough. The passion of football is dying. My passion for football is dying.And thus,a part of my childhood is dying.Christ alone knows I cling on to it.Just ask my wife.
How can anyone relate to these grossly overpaid morons is beyond me.Modern football is rubbish. Ever get the feeling you're being cheated? I do.
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