• Shoot Magazine
    The cardboard “Shoot League Ladders” to glue to your wall “Soccer as I see it” presumably ghost written for Alan Ball Sideburns, sock-tags, the gapped tooth smiles of another age The charmingly egalitarian questions posed by the quiz page John Hope is a goalkeeper but for which fourth division team? Whose last minute goal ended […]
  • Bobby Stokes
    A man’s life defined in one ten second frame, ball lightly traversing the canvass of sunlit grass his moment unfolding with joyful certainty, irrevocably recasting the parabola of his destiny Can there be any preparation for this elevation, for the intensity of the localised recognition. To bear the exquisite burden of tribal gratitude, fame without […]
  • All Yesterday’s Games
    The ghosts of yesterday’s football flit and start, flickering, teasing. How time sped, arching, arrowing away like some desperate, miscued shot Lost in the rituals of endless games, the intimacy of the immediate, unwatched, football slowly took its leave, pocketing our youth for good measure There he is again, still with us, laughing into the […]
  • A Sunday League Player Forgets….
    The portly ex-pro who stands and points like a conductor Your dodgy calf and what the hell is a strained abductor? The through ball that runs tantalisingly over the dead ball line The club disciplinary appearance – two weeks out or a fine The stinging irritation of the too small, borrowed boot blister Blowing that […]
  • John Giles
    If no footballer can be an island, never to drift alone over the sea-green of the surface, breaking the binds of the leaden-foot gaoler how close he came, how unique his gifts Expecting the pass, demanding the respect, the recognition for this instinctive positioning his creative mathematics, the confidence drawn equally from ability and responsibility […]