Thursday, April 02, 2009

putting one’s body on the line for charity….


The staff played the sixth form in a charity football match at school today.
We beat the students last year 3-0, when I’d refereed the game. This year, it seemed only right that I should take on a pivotal roll in the team formation. I decided to play the Rooney/Gerrard role within the team – filling the hole just behind the central attacker (many apologies to the few of you who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, but this is important stuff). From here, with my wealth of experience, I would be able to influence things, create goal-scoring chances out of nothing, be able to bring the less confident players into the game and, of course, offer encouragement to the team by my mere presence. I didn’t have time to mentally rehearse my goal celebrations but, hey, it was only for charity!
It was all great fun. The crowd was in very good voice and there were times when the chats of “Broad…waaay, Broad…waaay” rang out across the Astroturf (yes, they REALLY did!). Three of “my” Year 7s later told me that, in their eyes, I was “Man of the Match” (really again!)(I may give them merits). All in all, it was a memorable occasion and perhaps, for some, even life-changing. No doubt, in years to come, people will be telling “I was there” stories.
We lost 0-5.
PS: I should point out that we had 15 players in our squad. This meant that we had to employ a system of rolling substitutions and I was “on the bench” when three of the goals were scored! Will football managers never learn?
PPS: I haven’t got any photos of the game (something to do with sentanta copyright?) so the attached image is from one of our recent practice games.

1 comment:

Alice said...

oh this post has made me LAUGH!!!!! As much as the previous made me nod in agreement. love you dad.
xxx