Every boy’s a bit special
His eight-year-old son is showing precocious ability at football, striking the ball perfectly with both feet and more than holding his own in matches with lads two years and more his senior.
Someone with a lot of experience in the game saw him playing recently and remarked on his extraordinary balance and composure on the ball.
And the boy clearly knows he’s a bit special. The proud and, if truth be told, slightly bemused dad told me about a recent incident which, he laughed, just about summed up where his son’s head is at.
When his side won a free-kick, the coach shouted at the kid to float one towards the back post. The boy, standing over the ball, simply looked at him and silently shook his head. Annoyed, the coach shouted the instruction a bit louder. The boy smiled and shook his head again.
Then he faked to do just what he’d been told but, right at the end of his run-up, caught the opposition entirely off balance by suddenly playing a disguised and perfectly weighted pass into the path of an overlapping and unmarked team mate.
The coach was still shouting out his useless instructions as the ball whizzed into the back of the net. The architect of the goal then performed a celebration which involved him dancing, laughing uproariously and jabbing his fingers jeeringly in the direction of the poor old gaffer who, once he’d gotten a few choice oaths out of the way under his breath, just had to grin and bare it.
As the boy’s father told his story, my mind flashed to that sensational footage of Lionel Messi running rings around the opposition when he was just ten years old – and then, after the game, further entertaining his team-mates with a lengthy display of single-footed keepy-uppy. (You can check it out on YouTube. Enjoy).
Now, I don’t want to put any pressure on this young lad in Dublin but let’s just say that I know his name and maybe I’ll stick a few bob on him to score for Ireland in the 2022 World Cup. Or maybe not.
After all, he’ll be an ancient 20 by then and who knows if he’ll even still be playing football let alone inspiring another generation of eight-year-olds to try to follow in his footsteps.
We all know the guy who was the best footballer in the whole school and was never heard of again.
Or the burgeoning talent cut down prematurely by injury or illness.
Or the rising star, maybe even the next big thing, who gets distracted by extracurricular concerns and ends up with a head full of bitterness and a belly full of beer, playing the odd bit of park ball on a Sunday afternoon.
Football can be a cruel meritocracy and for every one who succeeds in making it to the top, there are countless others who fall by the wayside, even if they’ve worked hard, made sacrifices and given it their best shot.
So I hope that eight-year-old retains his cocky cheerfulness. I hope he enjoys every moment on the pitch and doesn’t get too bogged down, too soon, in what it might all mean for his career prospects. I hope the coaches don’t coach the sheer exuberance out of him. And I hope that if his talent doesn’t prove sufficient to carry him all the way, he’ll find his fulfilment in other areas of life, in work and in play, in family and in friends.
And most of all I hope he stays as healthy and as happy as fate allows.
If ever there was a week to inspire such thoughts, it’s the one which ends with Shane Duffy going home from hospital in the loving care of his parents.
“Hey, it’s Lazarus,” said a colleague yesterday, as the 18-year-old appeared before us outside the Mater Hospital. And, truly, it was as if the young Derry man had come back from the dead. The last time we’d seen him at such close quarters, he was being carried past us on a stretcher at Gannon Park, an oxygen mask clamped to his face, groaning in pain. Later we would learn that, in the hour which followed, he twice came perilously close to losing his life, as litres of blood from an internal wound leaked into his stomach.
Having performed their medical miracles, the experts say there’s no reason why Shane Duffy can’t resume his football career.
Indeed, you suspect his biggest battle may be psychological rather than physical, but his own determination was evident yesterday and his talent is not in doubt. We wish him nothing but the best.
Meantime, we can only echo his regard for the medics and the FAI personnel whose quick-thinking and expertise helped to save his life. Be humbled by the insistence of all concerned that they were only doing their jobs. And be touched by the sheer joy on the face of his father Brian as he watched his son walk back into the light.
You would struggle to find a more committed, passionate and even obsessional football man in the whole history of the game than the great Bill Shankly. Yet, there are some deluded people who still think he was being serious when he made that famous remark about football being more important than life and death. He wasn’t.
And if we didn’t know that before this week, we certainly do now.
liammackey@hotmail.com
