• The Window
    I knew it would happen; we missed the window. Our boat didn’t come in and nor did we swim to it. Our chairman had a month at Cowes Week. The vice-president got trapped in industrial brioche, was stuck in Lidl; there was no way out for him. Our secretary boarded the circling ghost bus on […]
  • A Robin for the Equinox
    The day I found out I was leaving, no-one told me. It was on Ceefax, page 302: I’m off to Bristol City! Maybe it’s time to ride the Severn Bore to Gloucester from Sharpness in tomorrow’s dusk and darkness. I can wander down Marine Parade, a fox in the box at Ashton Gate but a […]
  • Hammersmith Clipboards
    Then I realised there is no central being, no person in a back room with an Akashic list or metaphysical clipboard in Hammersmith. Ultimately, ‘Fulham’ does not exist. No single person can validate your support; will loyalty points cross our final threshold, rowed over unsettled water by a ferryman courier for passage to a packed […]
  • How Did You Get Me Again?
    How did you get me twice? Back on the field I thought I had escaped your clutches, comments, your dismissive shaking of the head. The frustrated Biology teacher helping with games, telling us we were useless with a glance: You got me then – now you’ve got me again. As a colleague, what’s your motivational […]
  • One Of These Days: A Full Back’s Triolet
    All angles of approach were wrong; James said ‘One of these days, you’ll play on the floor’, but I was in the far corner: it was two on one. All angles of approach were wrong. The midfield was cross I was clipping it long; I tried to look up and play what I saw. We […]