Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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tf The administration was more interested in pleasing the crowd than in letting him run his team. It has proved fortunate that they finally fired him. They did so after his team lost 6-0 to Bologna, a visiting Italian side. That night, before the game, I had been taken to the hospital with acute ap- pendicitis. He left the game at half-time, when the score was 1-0, and he put his assistant in charge. He came to the hospital. They never thought about that. It was easier to use him as a scapegoat. They appointed his assistant head coach. They were bloody Americans who couldn ' t even tell what shape a football is. They had no idea about who he was. He was just a name to them; a tidbit of news they could feed to the press. Now he works for a brewery as Director of Public Relations. He is still the best at what he does, but he is falling apart. He has to wear a back brace and, occasionally, one of those horrible sausage things around his neck. He cannot play too much golf or tennis because his elbow joints hurt. His knees hurt. He doesn ' t tell us and he tries not to show it but I ' ve seen him wdnce when he plays. Despite the fact that his injuries are catching up on him, he ' s the best athlete I have ever seen. In England, most of the players played because they ' couldn ' t do anything else. My dad played, initially, because it paid for his education. But not once when he was on the field did he think about the crowd or the money bonuses for scoring, or the pain. But it is impossible for the average person to see that. He sees the glamour and the money and the noise and the devoted public and the press clippings. He doesn ' t see what it ' s like on the field or in the dressing room. It is easy to say that it is a crowd-pleasing business. It is easy because, until you have been there and played with and against real players and experienced intensely the full range of emotions that sports supply; until you have been through the pain and despair and everything connected with athletes - you just cannot understand.

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' J •«fc for ten years. During that time they were in the first division. They have not been since. I never liked Birmingham very much so I suppose dad did not. I remember kicking a ball all day in a corner of the field during pre-season training, and drinking mugs of tea with the players. There must have been about six sugars in each mug. Birmingham sold him to Rotherham. We didn ' t move house so dad drove up and stayed in a boarding house, coming down for the odd weekend. Once, I went up and ' stayed with him for a weekend. It was the time the Beatles released Hey Jude and I can remember singing it with him. We sang it at the breakfast table. That was the first time I ever saw saccharin tablets. I could not stand them from the start. It ' s uncomfortable to sit and watch your father and have people around you make com- ments about him. He ' s getting slow or Leggat ' s getting nasty out there. They were old fools who had probably never kicked a ball in their lives and who would faint if they had to play in front of fifty thousand people. They were people who couldn ' t hold a candle to him; quite Kappy to kho aim as long as he was famous, but with very short memories if he was dropped. •«. Rotherham sold him to Aston Villa, -as a manager. He coached the youth team; mostly boys under twenty-one not yet signed as professionals, on amateur teams with the club. Their games were on Saturday mornings , and I probably never missed one. Except once. I was kicking a ball about in the dressing room after dad and his team had gone out to the bus. I doubt i noticed them leave and, anyway, I thought he would come back for me. I have stayed there all morning The team was great although ' ' He .stiff ad a arge enough reputation to at- tract the bullies. He wasn ' t pole-axed every time he was on the field; but he was good enough to make anyone look stupid. cannot f emember any of them now. I knew them all then and I suppose I used to tell them off whefl they were on the field, in the game. 1 shouted as vehemently as jf my dad. I was ei K Dad signed as an amateur in order to be able to play for them. This was awful for me because those little thugs put the boot in and the referees seemed to turn a blind eye to it. I suppose it was because he was older. It ' s awful to see ydur father being kicked about. Soraetimes, I have nightmares in which I dream he is being beaten up and, despite all my efforts, I cannot help him. Shortly after dad became an ■amateur, the manager of the first team was fired and dad resigned in sympathy. I stayed with the man just two simimers ago when I went for a trial with Manchestei United ' s youth tesim. I lasted two days. » After dad resigned, he played with local amateur sides for a few years. He still had a large enough reputation to attract the bullies. It ' s not that he was fragile or unable to take care of himself; nor was he pole-axed every time he stepped on a fielS. But he was good enough to m e anyone took stupid. They vvspbd fefing iiim dd qa after he had bea them or when the ball had gone. That is so shabby. Bfft he never shied away; 1 0 not suppose he ever thought about it. Then he quit. After working as a salesman for Xerox for a short time, he was offered a job as coach df a professional team in Toronto. It was soul-destroying.

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0 Sccnc(A Cf ttcC m6 cm cdmcC TVoMieef. He met her on a steel gray Sunday when nothing moves and it is not hard to see oneself as the only living boy in the city: the only one with any hint of colour. She was standing on the rock beach that had been thrown around the sea like a mantle. She was not pretty, too thin, with hair that seemed to have a mind of its own. There were others in the park and on the rocks too; but she alone had any colour. She looked sad and her eyes seemed to reflect a dark emptiness. Paul was not quite sure why he stopped there and sat down on one of the numerous benches, why he stared hardly blinking, why something dragged his mind away from the last night ' s adventures and flooded it with the hues that were her. Really, she was just a rough sketch of a girl, such as an artist might create with a few wide strokes of his pen after dinner while he waited for his coffee. It is strange how, now and then, nature produces such creatures. Her gait had a fascinatingly unexaggerated quality to it which was feminine without being overly sexy. Still, she could not have been more than five feet tall; every now and then she would pick up a handful of pebbles and they would run through her Qngers like so much water. If only she would look over here, Paul wished. I could take her by the hand and we could walk along the beach and hear the lake running up over the rocks and back. We could go home and sit on the floor, on the rug in front of the fire. She would sip wine slowly from a glass with a tall stem. We would talk, just talk, and never would we raise our voices over a whisper. Then, as the night came and the fire died, we would hold each other so close and promise never to let go. A police car raced by, its siren blaring, shattering the dream. Paul stood up, smoothed the wrinkles out of his clothes, and started back towards the road, and home. After a few seconds he stopped and looked back at the girl on the beach, glowing as if vdth the subtle hue of life itself, against the gray dullness of the day. A dog started to bark at a squirrel, a child yelled at his mother, two girls giggled at a private joke and she turned and smiled at him. She smiled at him and walked off in the other direction, a big, wide smile, a smile! He had smiled back and the trees became green and the sky turned blue. And, in the distance, the dog gave up its futile chase and trotted quietly off after some invisible trail, its tail wagging happily.