Football Spirit, page 6
‘He was never the same after that. I remember him telling me how his mother had to go to a neighbour’s house to ring Manchester and ask to speak to Matt Busby, and how she had to explain that Phil wouldn’t be coming over for a while.
‘He never did go over. It took him months to get back to fitness and he was never the same player again. He was still good though – he signed for Bohs then and we got a couple of excellent seasons out of him. Liam Whelan kept in touch, he used to write to him and called up any time he was home in Cabra – he lived over in St Attracta’s Road there,’ he pointed off to his left.
‘Phil had one really good run when he scored a clatter of goals and when Liam came to watch him one Sunday afternoon he rattled in a hat-trick against Drumcondra. Liam asked him would he be interested in going across again and Phil said he’d get back to him.’
Alfie blew his nose and took a deep breath before resuming his story.
‘But whatever decision he made, he never got a chance to tell Liam. A week or two later, well, the Munich crash happened and that was that. Poor Phil was devastated – he was so upset that he retired from football at the end of that season, and him not even twenty-one years of age.’
Mr Handy rubbed his eyes and thanked Alfie. ‘That explains so much,’ he told him. ‘He hadn’t even met my mother by then and she never knew the whole story. I’m sorry now I never asked him about it.’
‘Ah, he probably wouldn’t have talked about it,’ the old man replied. ‘He idolised Liam and I suppose he wondered, if things had played out different, whether he might have been on that plane too. But one thing is for sure – they were two great footballers, and their clubs and country missed them something terrible.’
Chapter 24
The old man stood up. ‘Well thanks for listening to me nattering on there. It’s great to see you lads back here – you certainly brought our boys a bit of luck last time, and we’ll need it again tonight.’ And off Alfie went for his pre-match cup of tea.
‘Wow,’ said Alan, ‘that was some story, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said his dad. ‘We’ll have to do a bit more research into this. I’d love to read some of the reports of the games he played.’
‘The biggest mystery of all, of course,’ Dylan said, ‘is how a brilliant player like him could have a grandson who is brutal at football.’
Even Alan joined in the laughter.
‘I don’t know,’ he responded. ‘Now it’s proved I’ve got some talent in my bloodline, maybe I ought to test it out at training on Monday.’
They settled back to enjoy the game, which finished in an entertaining 1-1 draw, with their new hero Seb Joyce firing in a sweetly-struck volley just after half-time. After Mr Handy had brought them back to school the trio went to the common room to tell their pals how their excursion had gone. The room was quiet, just a handful of boys watching television, playing chess or games on their phones.
Charlie leapt out of his chair to greet them.
‘Hey, Eoin, have you seen the senior team for tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘They’ve a friendly against St Kevin’s – and you’re in the match-day 23.’
Eoin’s face fell. ‘Really? That’s the first I’ve heard of any match. I’ve had only a handful of training sessions with them. It must be a mistake.’
But it wasn’t a mistake, as Charlie pointed to the noticeboard where the rugby team was posted.
Eoin hardly slept that night, tormented by the idea that he would have to come on as a replacement for the school’s top team and not a little fearful of taking on much bigger and stronger players.
‘These guys are all in the gym every day,’ he protested to his friends the following morning. ‘The only dumbbell I know is Dylan… Sorry Dyl!’
‘It’s a home game at least,’ said Alan.
‘But that only means there’ll be loads of guys watching,’ said Eoin. ‘They normally wouldn’t go to watch a friendly, but once they hear I’m playing half of Transition Year will come along.’
Chapter 25
And of course Eoin was right. Even his team-mates were surprised at how many spectators had turned out for an early-season friendly on a Saturday morning.
‘They must have heard we had one of the British and Irish Lions playing for us,’ suggested Ross Finnegan with a broad grin.
Eoin smiled thinly. He felt uncomfortable anyway, but he really hated being the centre of attention.
‘Madden, I don’t expect you will have to play too much,’ said Mr Carey, ‘but I’ll bring you on for the last ten minutes to give you a taste of the big boys.’
Eoin didn’t feel reassured by this – and was even less so when he saw the St Kevin’s College boys.
‘They… they’re fully grown men,’ he said to himself as he ran out for the warm-up.
Eoin had seen plenty of big, tough boys in his three years on Castlerock’s junior cup team, and his games with Leinster, Ireland and the Lion Cubs. But they were all lads his own age, give or take a year or two. The opposition today had stubble, even full beards.
Happily Castlerock’s out-half, Milo McGeady, came through the first half unscathed and with his team leading by nineteen points to nil Eoin hoped Mr Carey would forget about giving him a game.
He also knew he would never be so lucky, and sure enough with about ten minutes to go Mr Carey whistled to the remainder of the unused subs to start warming up. Eoin ran up and down the touchline, receiving a mixture of mild abuse and encouragement from his classmates.
‘No bother to you, Eoin,’ roared Dylan as he passed him in the crowd.
Eoin smiled, but inside he was feeling quite uncomfortable. At the next break in play the referee ushered on the replacements and Eoin took his place at out-half.
For the first couple of minutes he escaped having to do much more than pass the ball on to the inside centre. But with Castlerock on the attack, they won a lineout just outside the opposition 22 and the scrum-half, Odran, fed the ball back to him. Time was tight – he could feel the St Kevin’s tacklers bearing down on him – but he took a neat sidestep and chipped a lovely ball over the defence and watched as it tumbled into touch a couple of metres from the try-line.
‘Great kick, Eoin,’ came the roars from his team-mates, as the visitors had just realised who had arrived in their midst.
‘That’s that Lions fella,’ grunted one.
Ross Finnegan won the ball in the lineout and the forwards formed a maul around him, pushing and heaving till they collapsed over the line and the referee signalled the try.
‘Great work, Eoin, you set that up for us brilliantly,’ said Ross as they trotted back. Eoin realised he would be taking the conversion, but he hurried his kick and it sliced wide.
The game resumed and Castlerock were still well on top as the final whistle neared. From a scrum around half-way, the number nine fed the ball back to Eoin who again kicked for touch. But as his kicking foot touched the ground again – long after the ball was gone – Eoin was floored by the St Kevin’s open-side flanker.
Eoin hadn’t seen him coming, and was stunned as he hit the ground with force. The referee blew up and awarded a penalty – ‘That was far too late,’ he told the St Kevin’s player, adding, ‘if there was any more time left I’d give you a yellow.’
Once the initial shock of the tackle wore off, the serious pain from his ankle wore on, and Eoin roared in agony. He was afraid to look at his foot and noticed that the referee’s face had gone white.
‘Medic, please,’ shouted the ref, ushering on the trainer who had first-aid training. Mr McDermott took one look at the injury and took out his mobile phone.
‘You’ll be OK, Eoin,’ he said, ‘the ambulance will be here in five minutes.’
He told Eoin not to look at his foot, but he had already worked that out for himself and had no intention of doing so. He tried to concentrate on willing the pain away and thinking of happier times.
Chapter 26
It was only after Eoin had treatment in the hospital emergency department that the pain started to lessen, and he actually dozed off for a few minutes. When he woke up he realised that must have been the medicine and he asked the doctor how bad was the injury.
‘Well, we’ve had a quick look and we’ll be sending you for an x-ray shortly. I won’t speculate about it – but I suspect you won’t be playing rugby for a few months anyway.’
Eoin slumped in his seat – disappointed not so much about missing rugby, but about not getting to play with the Red Rockets.
When he came back from being x-rayed his friends were waiting for him.
‘That was a shocker of a tackle,’ said Dylan, ‘a few of the sixth years had a word with your man in the dressing room afterwards. He won’t be coming back to Castlerock in a hurry anyway.’
Eoin smiled and asked had either of them got a phone he could borrow. Alan opened the entry for Eoin’s dad and handed over his mobile.
‘Cheers, Al, but I always ring my mam first with bad news. Dad would fly off the handle and drive straight up here; Mam knows how to explain it to him sensibly.’
Sure enough, Eoin’s mother was shocked and upset, but she quickly regained her composure and started asking about the important-for-mums stuff like whether he would miss any lessons and did he have clean pyjamas if he had to stay over in hospital.
‘I’ll be fine, Mam,’ he finished, ‘the lads are here with me and Mr Carey sent a message that he would collect me when I’m ready. Text me later on my own phone, I’ll pick it up soon – and give my best to Dad and Dixie.’
Eoin handed back the phone to Alan, who asked the question that had been bugging him and Dylan since the incident.
‘Well Eoin, do you think you’ll be OK for the soccer thing, the Gillespie Cup?’
Eoin sighed, and told him he didn’t think so, but as he was explaining why the doctor returned.
‘We have the x-rays back,’ he told Eoin, ‘and it’s not as bad as I feared.’
The doctor opened a large brown folder and showed him the image of his damaged ankle. ‘You see here – well if it was broken you’d see a bright white line, but there hasn’t been any break. It’s been badly sprained though and you will need a bit of ice for the next while, then you will be on crutches and plenty of rest for a few weeks.’
‘So when can I play sport again?’ he asked.
‘We can have you up and running around in three or four weeks,’ he said, ‘but rugby or football? Don’t even try it for six weeks.’
Eoin’s face fell, and his pals’ joined it in sympathy.
‘But I can give you exercises to do,’ the doctor added, ‘and if you do them every day I could see you back playing quickly enough.’
Eoin thanked him and the doctor left.
‘That’s a disaster,’ said Dylan. ‘Our first match is in just three weeks, you’ve no chance of playing in that.’
‘You’ll be fine without me,’ Eoin replied. ‘There’s plenty of better footballers than me, I was only making up the numbers.’
‘No way,’ said Alan, ‘You were a big part of our plan to sort out the defence,’ he said.
‘We’ll have to look at a few more of Alan’s twenty-three plans now,’ Dylan said with a grin.
Chapter 27
Mr Carey brought Eoin and the other boys home that evening, but he hardly said a word to them in the car journey back to school.
‘Thanks, sir,’ Eoin said as he hobbled up the steps with the aid of his new crutches.
‘No problem, Eoin, and I’m sorry your first Senior game ended the way it did.’
‘Oh well,’ he replied, ‘I probably shouldn’t have been up against guys that much bigger than me anyway.’
Mr Carey gulped and nodded. ‘Well, good luck with the rehab and if you need any help getting around give me a shout.’
When they got back to the dorm – Eoin had been granted the rare privilege of a key to the staff lift – Dylan started to laugh.
‘Well you certainly told him what you think of forcing you to play against older lads. He might think twice next time,’ he said with a chuckle.
‘Yeah, I just wanted to make that point,’ Eoin replied. ‘I’m sure he’ll make me pay for it down the line, but I enjoyed letting him know he was in the wrong.’
Alan went to lie down on his bed when he noticed someone had left a small parcel under his pillow.
‘Your father called in while you were out,’ read the attached note, which was signed by Mr McCaffrey.
Alan tore open the packet, and was perplexed to discover it just contained a card and a pair of very old black and red football socks.
The note on the card read: ‘These were your grand-father’s Bohs socks. They might bring you a bit of luck. Dad.’
‘Well that decides it,’ Alan announced. ‘I was thinking of giving football a proper go. Now there’s a vacancy on the team – and I have a legend’s socks. What could go wrong?’
And sure enough, on Monday afternoon Alan joined the Red Rockets for training. He and Dylan had spent an hour the previous evening having a kick-about on the back field, allowing Alan to get used to some of the basic skills he had neglected since he played on a team in primary school. He also rediscovered how fearless he was in tackling opponents.
‘I’m too small to play central defence,’ he told Dylan, ‘but I can read a game well and know when I need to get forward, so I could definitely do a decent job as a full-back, preferably on the right.’
Dylan nodded. ‘Andrew’s not the best, but you’re going to have to win his place off him. Let’s see how you go in training – I’d be reluctant to make a big change in the defence at this late stage, especially seeing how ropey it was in the friendly.’
Alan agreed, and promised he would work hard to earn his place.
He was first to arrive for the Red Rockets’ training session and checked the goalposts were in place and arranged the cones for the warm-up drills.
‘Fair play, Alan,’ said Dylan when he arrived. ‘Good to see your new enthusiasm now you’re a player-coach.’
When the rest of the Rockets were ready Dylan filled them in on Eoin’s injury and gave them the news that the return friendly against Ligouri would be the following Friday. ‘So I want to see a good turn-out for the extra session at 5 o’clock on Wednesday,’ he told them.
Alan wasn’t very fit so he found the pace of the training hard to get used to, but by the time the inter-squad ten-a-side finished off the session he was feeling better. He was even able to keep pace with the opposing winger as he raced down the wing, and closed him down so he was unable to get in a cross.
‘Good work, Alan,’ said Dylan as they collected the cones after the game. ‘I won’t be too worried if Andrew gets injured. I’ll have you in the match-day fifteen for the friendly anyway.’
Alan grinned, and felt ten feet tall walking back to the dorm where Eoin was lying on his bed with his foot in the air.
‘How was that?’ he asked Alan.
‘Great!’ came the reply. ‘We’re starting to look more like a team anyway. Which reminds me…’
Alan rummaged in his schoolbag and took out his art copy.
‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, showing Eoin a red and white logo of a rocket with flames emerging from the back of it. The name of the team was curved around the bottom of the circle.
‘That’s class, Al,’ Eoin told him. ‘But who is this team that calls themselves the Red Rookets?’
Alan snatched the copybook from him and realised with horror that he had misspelt the name of the team.
‘Just as well you spotted that, I was going to get it printed up for our team-sheets.’
Chapter 28
Eoin’s ankle returned to normal dimensions after a day or two and lots of ice, but he wasn’t able to get around on it very much – classroom, dining hall and bedroom were pretty much the limits of his horizon, with a couple of short steps outside for some fresh air.
‘Will you be able to get around to watch the Ligouri match?’ asked Alan when they were sitting on a bench outside the main entrance to the school. ‘It will be on the back pitch. Billy was asking about the proper dimensions and how to line the field. I think he was a bit worried about the big centre circle – up to now he’s only done straight lines for rugby.’
‘Tell him to get a piece of string and a peg,’ Eoin suggested. ‘Put the peg in the middle of the half-way line and he could make the line-maker into a giant compass like we use in maths. As long as he keeps the string stretched it will be fine. Same with the ‘D’ on the penalty area, only he doesn’t do a full circle.’
‘That’s amazing,’ said Alan. ‘Did you come up with that yourself?’
‘No,’ Eoin replied. ‘When I was down in the Aviva a couple of years ago Brian made me watch the ground staff when they were converting it into a soccer pitch.’
‘Wow,’ Alan replied. ‘That’s a great idea. Can you sit here on your own for a minute while I go down and tell him?’
Eoin sat back on the bench and closed his eyes. It was rare to get a moment of peace in a boarding school, and he enjoyed those times when he did. But it never lasted long.
‘Eoin, are you asleep?’ came the call. Eoin opened his eyes to see Brian standing in front of him.
‘I haven’t got very long,’ Brian explained, ‘but I just wanted to check if you had seen anything happening out of the ordinary. We’re getting a lot of disturbance in the atmosphere and a lot of murmurings that there may be trouble ahead.’
Eoin pointed at his foot. ‘Only this, I suppose,’ as he explained about his damaged ankle. ‘And, yes, we went back to Dalymount and the old guy told us about Alan’s grandfather, who was a really good footballer. He knew that fellow Liam Whelan who we talked about before.’
‘OK, well if you think of anything else, I’ll drop down to the Rock every evening around seven o’clock, if you can’t make it that far’ – he nodded towards Eoin’s foot – ‘send Alan along instead.’
