Football Spirit, page 4
‘He was!’ replied Eoin. ‘He seems to have been a great player.’
‘Well Alfie says so, and he’s a very good judge of footballers.’
The second half was all Bohs, with Joyce completing his hat-trick, although Dylan allowed himself a smile when Limerick picked up a consolation goal towards the end.
‘Five-one, that was some value for money,’ said Alan as they wandered towards the exits. As they passed the doorway into the club bar, they spotted Alfie.
‘Well lads,’ he called, ‘Did you enjoy your first visit to Dalyer?’
‘It was brilliant,’ gushed Alan, ‘and thanks for explaining so much of the history for us.’
‘No problem,’ the old man replied. ‘It’s great to find youngsters happy to listen to me rabbiting on about the good old days.’
‘It was really interesting,’ Eoin added.
‘Do you have a few minutes, lads?’ Alfie asked. ‘It’s just there’s some great photos inside here I’d love to show you,’ as he pointed to the doorway. ‘You won’t be let into the bar, but there’s a few on the walls just outside it.’
‘I suppose so…’ said Dylan, checking out that his friends agreed. They followed Alfie inside.
‘Here’s a photo of the great Manchester United team that played here,’ he said, pointing out his hero Liam Whelan.
He showed them a few photos of other great players and told them he’d get them a full tour of the collection if they came early on the next match day.
As they were leaving, Eoin turned back and said, ‘Alan forgot to mention that his grandfather used to play here for Bohemians.’
‘Really? What was his name, I might remember him?’ he asked.
‘Handy. Phil Handy,’ Alan replied.
The old man’s face turned pale.
‘Well now,’ he started, ‘that’s a name I haven’t heard in many a year. I’ll tell you now son, Phil Handy was one of the best players I ever saw in the old red and black. You should be very proud of your grandfather. He could have played for Ireland. And it was a terrible tragedy for this club too that he stopped playing.’
Alfie told them that he had to meet someone so made his farewells and headed towards the bar, but Eoin was sure that he saw a tear escape from the corner of his eye as he turned his head away from them.
Chapter 15
The detour with Alfie meant the boys had to dash to make their bus and so missed their planned visit to the burger restaurant.
Dylan wasn’t happy.
‘I am always grouchy when I’m hungry,’ he complained, looking longingly out the bus window as they passed several chip shops and lots of restaurants offering food from almost every nation on earth.
But Alan had a plan. ‘Let’s get off at the stop after the school and we can go the twenty-four-hour shop there for snacks. Dinner’s never any good on a Saturday night so we can stock up for the evening.’
Eoin thought that sounded like a good idea, although he was trying to eat healthier after a summer when he had let his habits slip.
Dylan moaned that they would have a ‘much longer’ walk back to school, but Alan and Eoin had stopped listening to him by then.
‘I wonder what happened to Grandad that he stopped playing,’ Alan asked Eoin. ‘I’ll have to ask Dad next time he calls over.’
‘Yeah, it was a bit of a mystery that,’ agreed Eoin. ‘I wonder was it a bit like Dixie?’
Eoin’s grandfather was a very good rugby player who retired just as he was about to become a star, and Eoin spent much of his first year at the school trying to find out why.
The Number 4 sailed past Castlerock and the boys got off at the next stop, thanking the driver as they got off.
Dylan raced to be first in the queue and ordered two large sausage rolls and two bags of crisps.
‘How are you going to eat all that?’ Eoin asked him, after he chose an energy bar and an apple.
‘No trouble to me, I’m starving after all that fresh air,’ replied Dylan.
Alan joined Dylan in buying sausage rolls and the trio munched their food as they strolled back to the school.
‘So, what did you think of your first soccer match?’ asked Dylan between bites.
‘Very enjoyable,’ replied Alan. ‘It was a lot more crack than watching a match on television.’
‘Yeah, I thought that too,’ said Eoin, ‘and it was interesting to watch from up high and see the formations they take and how they change them as the game develops. You could see players running off the ball a lot, which you rarely see on the TV.’
Alan admitted he had been reading a book about football tactics and was interested in coaching the Red Rockets if Dylan thought he could help.
‘Well, I was thinking I would fit more of a player-manager role,’ replied Dylan, ‘but we’d still need a coach to put out the cones and all that.’
‘Put out the cones? There’s a bit more to it than that,’ laughed Alan.
The sun was starting to set when they slipped back into the grounds of Castlerock where they met Mr McCaffrey just outside the main school building.
‘Good evening, boys, it’s a nice night for a stroll,’ the headmaster said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed dinner but cook may have some leftovers that would make a sandwich for you. Is that a football scarf I see there – where have you all been?’
Eoin stepped forward: ‘We just went to see a football match, sir. Dylan’s team from down home were playing so we went along to see them.’
‘And did they win?’ asked Mr McCaffrey.
‘No sir,’ replied Dylan. ‘They lost 5-1.’
‘Well, that must have been very disappointing for you. But do hurry on there, cook will want to be getting home for the evening so you better get to her right away, unless you want to starve.’
The boys arrived just in time and the cook was not too irritated by their late arrival. She made them each a chicken sandwich, which they took up to their room.
As they munched, they discussed what they would do next with the Red Rockets.
‘We’ll try and train twice a week, and hopefully we’ll have enough players to have a few eleven versus eleven games between ourselves,’ said Dylan.
‘But we should also try to get a few friendlies against other schools?’ asked Alan. ‘It might be nice to test ourselves.’
‘We could see if the lads in Ligouri would give us a game,’ suggested Eoin.
‘Definitely,’ said Dylan, ‘but let’s see how the next couple of weeks go first.’
Chapter 16
There was a nasty surprise waiting for the boys when they got down to the dining hall for breakfast.
They had just collected their food and taken their seats when the headmaster stormed in.
‘Coonan, Handy, Madden, come here please,’ he thundered, waving a newspaper in the air and directing them to join him at the main entrance.
‘When you told me you had gone to see some local team play a football match, I presumed it was some park kickabout, not a professional League of Ireland game on the far side of the city,’ he started, pointing to the match report in the newspaper.
Eoin gulped, and thought, We should never have told him the score.
Dylan tried to explain. ‘But sir, it wasn’t that far away at all,’ he said, ‘we got the bus outside and it left us right at the ground. You saw we got home before dark.’
But Mr McCaffrey was in no mood for explanations. ‘I’m sorry, but that ground is far too far away from the school for you to be getting buses to it without express permission. And where has this new interest in soccer come from? I thought you were all keen rugby players?’
‘We still are, sir,’ Alan explained. ‘It’s just there’s not much rugby for TY students and we thought we’d set up a soccer club – loads of boys are interested in playing. For fitness, like.’
‘Loads?’ replied the headmaster, looking angrier than ever. ‘I don’t want loads of Castlerock boys being distracted away from rugby. Winning the Leinster Schools Senior Cup is most important to this school. Any distraction from that is simply unacceptable. I thought Mr Carey had made that clear to you, Mr Madden.’
Eoin shuffled his feet and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before he replied.
‘I’m playing rugby this year, sir. I won’t miss a single training session or game. But I also want to play football with my friends, and that’s why we have set up this soccer club.’
Mr McCaffrey stared back at him. ‘But you won’t have time to do both … and you could get injured…’
‘I could get injured playing rugby, sir,’ Eoin replied. ‘In fact, I’m much more likely to be hurt playing rugby, especially against boys at least two years older than me.’
The headmaster shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, and I really can’t see how you could fit in two sports with your studies. You will have to give up this soccer.’
Eoin was shocked, but he wasn’t going to back down. ‘Well that’s a shame, sir, because I was really looking forward to playing rugby and soccer together. But if you’re telling me I can’t play football then I will have to go back to my original plan and take a year off rugby.’
Mr McCaffrey’s jaw dropped open. ‘No, no, no,’ he replied, ‘you cannot do that.’
Eoin shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just want to play with my friends, not boys two years ahead of me. I don’t think that’s being unreasonable, sir.’
The headmaster was used to getting his own way, but was now flustered, dismayed at how the conversation had turned.
‘I-I-I’ll have to talk to you about this later,’ he said, before turning and walking away.
The boys returned to their table.
‘What was that about?’ asked Theo, one of their classmates.
‘That was just Eoin putting the headmaster in his place,’ chuckled Dylan.
Eoin glared at his friend. ‘That wasn’t it at all,’ he said. ‘I just don’t like being pushed around. I thought the head was being unfair and I told him so.’
Alan frowned. ‘I hope he doesn’t hold it against you – or the Red Rockets.’
Chapter 17
After breakfast, Eoin decided he wanted to be on his own and so changed into his trainers and went for a run around the school grounds. He trotted around the playing fields for twenty minutes before he took a breather, pushing through the bushes to his favourite hideaway, the Rock.
‘Good morning, Eoin,’ came a familiar voice.
‘Hello, Brian,’ Eoin replied. ‘What has you around these parts today?’
‘Oh, nothing in particular, I just seem to be zipping all over the place at the moment. What have you been up to?’
Eoin sighed, and explained about their excursion to Dalymount Park.
‘And now the headmaster tells me I have to give up playing football. It’s just not fair. I made it clear to him that if he did then I wouldn’t be playing rugby either.’
Brian nodded, and told Eoin he had great sympathy for his position.
‘But think about it,’ he went on. ‘Who does this hurt more – you or him? You will just end up doing nothing all year and miss out on a lot of great sport. You only have three years left in school, and you’ll always regret this year if you just give up everything.’
Eoin shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t back out of it now. It would be letting down Alan and Dylan. And I know I am in the right on this one, he’s the one being unreasonable.’
Brian nodded; he couldn’t argue with Eoin on that.
‘So what was the match like – I used to go to a lot of soccer games. I once saw Ireland play Italy at Lansdowne Road, a cracking match it was – I remember it as if it were yesterday. Although it was nearly a hundred years ago – 1927 I think.
‘Ireland took the lead through our star player, Bob Fullam, but Italy won 2-1. Fullam had the hardest shot of any player I’ve ever seen – one free kick hit one of the Italians in the head and knocked him out cold. They were pleading with the referee not to allow Fullam take any free kicks after that!’
Eoin laughed. ‘No there was nothing as dramatic as that. Dylan was all enthusiastic about seeing his beloved Limerick, but he cooled a lot on them after they were beaten 5-1.
‘When we were over in Dalymount Park we met an old man who told us all about the great players he had seen, he was a bit like a soccer version of you – only still alive,’ joked Eoin.
‘Very funny,’ said Brian. ‘I haven’t met too many soccer ghosts down in Lansdowne Road – I think that Italy match was the last game played there for nearly fifty years.’
‘So you would never have seen Liam Whelan,’ asked Eoin. ‘The old lad, Alfie, said he was the best player he ever saw. But he was killed in a plane crash when he was twenty-two.’
‘The same age as I was when… when it happened,’ said Brian.
‘Wow, yes, of course. That’s quite a coincidence,’ said Eoin.
‘No, I never saw him play, but his name is familiar. I hear all sorts of people being discussed,’ Brian added.
Eoin decided it was time to get back to the dormitory and bade farewell to Brian. He had to sort out his uniform and clothes for the week ahead. ‘At least I won’t have to worry about sports gear,’ he said to himself as he jogged back to the school.
Chapter 18
Eoin was relieved to see Dylan and Alan were not in the dormitory, so he lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling to ponder his problem.
He knew Brian was right, of course, but Eoin didn’t like to back down when he felt entirely in the right. He couldn’t go a whole winter without playing something, he loved the camaraderie of the dressing room too much. But to bar him completely from playing football was unjust.
His head hurt from all the thinking so he closed his eyes and within a minute he had dozed off.
It was almost one o’clock when he awoke and realised he hadn’t completed all the chores he had set himself to do that morning.
He hopped off the bed and quickly sorted out his clothes, filling a bag for the laundry, which he threw over his shoulder and headed down the stairs.
As he reached the bottom the front door opened and in walked Mr Finn, an elderly gentleman who had retired from teaching at Castlerock a few years before.
‘Ah, Eoin, it’s so good to see you again,’ he said. ‘And how are your family keeping?’
Eoin’s father, and grandfather, had both been at school in Castlerock. Indeed his grandad, Dixie, had been in the same class as Andy Finn.
‘They’re all well, sir,’ he replied.
‘No need to call me “sir” any longer,’ Mr Finn said, with a smile. ‘But I do need to talk to you today. Will you meet me back here at quarter past two?’
Eoin nodded his agreement and went to drop his clothes to the laundry before heading for the dining hall in search of lunch.
There he met Dylan, Theo, Alan and Charlie, who were arguing about something as they polished off their apple tart and ice cream.
‘Hey, Eoin, did you have a good nap? We called up to the room at one stage, but you were snoring your head off,’ announced Dylan.
‘Yeah, thanks for leaving me be,’ Eoin replied. ‘I had a bit of a headache.’
‘That’s not surprising,’ said Alan, ‘Are you alright mate?’
‘You won’t be alright when I tell you who’s just been here,’ said Dylan. ‘Only the headmaster, and he told me that until the situation was resolved he would not permit soccer to be played on the school grounds.’
Eoin groaned, feeling his headache return.
‘I’m still not sure what I’m going to do,’ he told his friends. ‘And I just met Andy Finn outside – he wants to have a chat with me after lunch.’
‘Wow, Mr McCaffrey must have called him in to twist your arm,’ suggested Dylan. ‘Andy’s sound though, he’ll know what to do.’
Mr Finn was a gentle character, and had been a great help to Eoin when he was struggling to settle into Castlerock – not least through the excellent book on rugby coaching he had written many years before.
‘Shall we go for a stroll around the fields?’ he suggested to Eoin. ‘It seems such a waste to be indoors on such a fine day.’
The pair rambled off, exchanging chit-chat about what they had been up to in the summer, and the new challenges Eoin was facing in Transition Year.
‘Which, of course, brings me to your little dilemma,’ said Mr Finn with a smile.
Eoin grinned weakly back at him. ‘You’ve heard about it so?’ he asked.
‘Well, Mr McCaffrey rang me last night in quite a tizzy,’ he replied. ‘He tells me you are refusing to play rugby, which does seem a great pity.’
‘It’s not quite that simple, sir,’ Eoin answered, before going on to explain about why he come to the decision he had.
Mr Finn let him speak without interruption until he had finished his story.
‘Thank you for explaining that so well, Eoin,’ he started. ‘And I do think you have a point about the fairness of it all. Do you think you might see a way to returning to rugby if the headmaster gave his approval to the soccer club being set up and allowed use the facilities?’
Eoin chewed his lip. ‘I would, but I don’t think it’s fair if he stops me from playing too. I don’t want this to be all about me, but I really want to have a bit of fun playing light-hearted sport with my pals. I don’t think it will get in the way of my rugby – and if it does then I’m happy to let soccer take a back seat.’
Mr Finn smiled. ‘Well, I think we have room to manoeuvre there, Eoin. Let me take that to the headmaster and I will see if we can work out a compromise to suit all parties. You are such an excellent rugby player that it would be a shame to let that go to waste – but you are also an excellent friend to your pals and it would be terrible to interfere with that.’
