Play the game

 

Winter in the Waikato meant rain. I loved growing up there, but in the winter we spent a lot of time running home from school in squelching shoes with a chill down the back of our necks where the rain got in under sodden coats.

I would go to bed on a Friday night praying that the thrum of rain on the tiles overhead didn't get any louder, and wake up doing the same. Sometimes I knew straight away football would be cancelled, the rain would push against the windows and I didn't have to wipe the frosted glass to know the clouds would be sitting dark and low over the apple trees leading to the park out the back. They could stay all day sometimes.

Our toilet was out the back door and across a small porch, through the laundry. I would move quietly down the hallway and out the door, the lawn and all dad's shrubs would be glistening, heavy. But if the rain was over and water didn't pool around the clothesline there was a fair chance football was on, we played on some decent mud piles. Sometimes if the trees looked heavier than ever I would duck down the concrete steps leading from the porch and stick my finger into the lawn, convincing myself that it hadn't gone in far at all.

When I came out of my room with my gear on and tracksuit jacket over the top Dad would be up, probably throwing some old bread out to the birds. The radio would be on and I would sit down at the breakfast table. After the news at the top of the hour there was always a moment of dread, the morning DJ would come back on, say something like 'now, sports cancellations today' and pause, shuffling unseen papers. 'Nothing today' or perhaps the really little guys, the under-6's and 7's might be given the day off. I could breathe again, I could see myself out on the pitch already.

I loved football more than anything, was absolutely mad for it.

I knew Dad didn't. But Saturday breakfast there would be crumpets, instead of the usual toast. Or he would have opened a can of sardines. Special, just enough to make it so much more than the week just gone.

We would drive to the game in his work ute, the one he drove every day for miles and miles and back again. The radio would be on and the talk would be of all the sport to come, Waikato rugby first division, maybe a Ranfurly Shield defence or even an All Black test.

He wasn't one of those dads who had lots of ideas about how you could play, should play. He just expected you would do what the coaches told you, do your best. Some of the other dads had a lot of ideas, every week. We would just drive along in a nice silence, listening to the ex footballers talk. It was never far in a small town.

By the time I was about 13 or 14 I was pretty good at football, and I got into teams that were pretty darn good. That year we had won maybe 8 or 9 games in a row, against good teams. Every week the game would be close and then in the second half we would just find a way, be that little bit better.

That Saturday the game started as always and we did the things we always did. Except we didn't, passes would come up a bit short, go too far, and the more we tried the more it just wouldn't seem to come right. Some of the parents starting shouting things, just encouragement I guess but encouragement sounds just like admonishment at times like that. Not dad though, never.

A pass went a bit far, and one of our players said something to another. Not criticising, just encouraging I guess, but they came seem one and the same.

A pass came up short and we went a goal behind. One of our players said something to another, and he replied. 

I said something.

'Play the game Tramway'. The words came across the field as if there was nothing in the world except them, not loud, not angry, somehow all encompassing.

I played so hard that day, never saying a word. I scored the winner late in the second half, probably the best goal I ever scored, running onto a perfect pass just over halfway and sprinting for goal with a defender right there at my hip all the way trying just as hard as I was, until the keeper had to come out to narrow the angle and kept coming and kept coming and then I rolled the ball just beyond his left hand into the corner of the net.

We drove home in the same lovely silence, the radio on with the hubbub of the crowd in the background at a rugby ground somewhere close by.