When we moved up into Primary 7 our footballing world changed considerably. Gone were our best players and we didn’t have enough new talent coming through from the year below us to pose a serious threat to anyone. We called in a few of the fringe players from Primary 7 and they actually surprised us even if they weren’t used to playing in an 11-a-side team. The other change was that one of the other local schools was being refitted and their P6 and P7 classes moved into our school for a year. Where we used to struggle to to fill two 7-a-side teams for games at lunchtime we were getting 14 v 14 at times and it became an intense rivalry over the weeks and months that it went on. Games would be started at the morning break if we hadn’t already managed to get a game underway before school actually started in the morning. We’d then have a long ‘half’ at lunchtime where our players would join in as and when they finished their lunch and we would finish it off at the afternoon break. The rivalry went much further than just football though. When it came time for the local school swimming championships one of their players managed to get a silver in the 50m freestyle competition. Their joy was short lived when they realised that Craig had stole the gold and I’d brought home the bronze. I don’t think we ever let them forget that.

This year seen our best result so far and possibly the one result we remember. We didn’t even win and it was our best result. How sad is that? As with almost all schools in the West of Scotland there is a huge rivalry between the catholic schools and the non-catholic schools. Some say it’s a bad thing but at that age almost no one is interested in bigotry side of things as it’s all about the fact we were better than they were at whatever we were playing or vice versa. Our Lady of Lourdes Primary was our enemy. Where we had a healthy rivalry with Kirktonholme as they were sharing our school Our Lady of Lourdes was actually the nearest school to where most of us lived. If I went to the corner shops at the end of my street you could see it. We never mixed with them and so the only time we could get one up on them was during sports. Unfortunately they had one of the best teams in the league. The previous year they were putting six or seven goals past us with ease but this time we were determined to get something back from them.

I’d been moved over to play in central defence by this point and I managed to get a good understanding with the other defenders. Nothing could get past us on the ground as every time the ball came near us we would throw a crunching tackle in and clear the ball back up the park. Where we fell down however was we were still as slow as hell. All it took was someone to realise that we couldn’t keep up with their forwards and boot the ball over our heads and have it come down to a foot race. Our Lady of Lourdes hadn’t worked this out though. We got stuck into them hard during a cup game and pretty soon we were drawing 2-2 with them and the scoreline stayed that way until the final whistle. You would have though we had won the cup given the way we were celebrating. Before the game we were told that in the event of a tie as there was no time for replays and because we were under a certain age and couldn’t play extra time whoever put the most pressure on the other team and won the most corner kicks would be declared the winner. For every corner they had won we must have won at least two we were that worked up about this game. Then their headmistress got involved. It was unheard of for her team to lose like that and was putting in a complaint that the referee was biased towards us. There we were having played our hearts out and finally won something even if it wasn’t technically a win and she was pulling it away from us. I’d skinned the entire length of my leg on the ash park after throwing everything I had into every tackle and ended up having to get a lift back to the first aid room at the school. Whatever happened after that game though we have no idea but we found out at the next practice that we were having to replay the game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bunch of eleven year olds make so much noise in disgust before. Needless to say they put about 13 goals past us in the replay.

We took part in a seven-a-side competition in Strathclyde Park about midway through the season and were about the only team from East Kilbride taking part. Sometimes I wonder how we managed to get into these things when we were so far down the league but we never questioned it at the time. In our group stage were three other teams and basically if you didn’t win two out of your three games you weren’t going through to the next round. So the first game we played we were completely overwhelmed. There was no beating about the bush they were just far superior to us. At this point we realised that the team we were due to play next was being managed by Derek Ferguson and as we were almost all Rangers supporters we spent more time trying to talk to him than concentrating on the games. As I can completely understand now he got a little pissed off with us and ended up have our manager pull us away so that he could work with his team. It was at this point that someone realised that the reason Derek was managing the next team was that his younger brother played for them. We were royally beaten but the game didn’t end before I managed to kick the younger brother, Barry, up in the air and almost end his future career before it started*. It wasn’t malicious but I was terrified Derek was going to beat seven different shades out of me. We got stuck in and as with any competition we ever entered we started to play well as soon as it was impossible for us to win anything. We beat that team but we were on the bus home within 5 minutes of the game ending feeling as though we hadn’t won a thing.

Again we finished second last in the league although this time I managed to captain the team a couple of times.

Even 7 years later when I was still playing for hours every night I could never get that feel for competitive football again. Throughout secondary school I never played a game outwith P.E. and certainly was never picked to train with the team. I became more comfortable on the ball and my passing improved and with that my position gradually changed from a centre half to somewhere in the midfield. I don’t play football very often now. Those of my friends that do play all have regular games which I can never get into and to be honest until I get a clean bill of health from the doctors anything that involves me running about is off the cards.

I would spend days and weeks playing Football Manager/Championship Manager on my computer during the winter months whilst waiting for the weather to become good enough to play for real. I ate up anything I could find to read about Rangers and followed every game on TV. To this day I’ve still never set foot in Ibrox and in all honesty I’m not really a fan of watching the game but I still love to play it. I guess it makes me feel like I’m eleven again.

* Barry went on to play for and captain Glasgow Rangers and Scotland over his years of playing professional football.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my childhood. I don’t know if it’s because I now have kids of my own or whether it’s because I’ve got back in touch with a few folk from primary school through Facebook but it’s certainly on my mind.

And do you know what strikes me more than anything about that time? The sheer amount of football I played. I’m not talking a game of seven and by on a sunny night when our parents had kicked us out of the house. I’m talking from the age of about five years old playing at least 2 hours of football a night and even more on weekends if the weather was good enough. Even at the age of 18 I was playing 3-4 hours of football on weeknights. My sudden stop when I fell out with/lost contact with they guys during the year I turned 19 basically explains where my gut came from.

Being five years old and the tallest in my class meant that any time I played football you could almost guarantee I would be in goals at some point. We used to play on a huge strip of grass beside my parents house. On one edge there was a swing park and we used the rest of the grass as a huge pitch. To this day I’ve never worked out why we always placed the goals where we did. On one side the hill fell away and was covered in bushes and nettles and about 20 yards in we placed the goals. The other side of the pitch ran all the way up to the road which was about another 100 yards away. The only rules we used with regards to pitch markings was the goal line and the outer boundaries of the park for the sides. If it went passed that it was either a goal or out of bounds but you could keep playing even of the ball went all the way up to the main road.

As with most groups of kids playing in the street the age range usually ran from about fives years old right up until twelve. Any older than that and they found something better to do or better players to play with. We were always in awe of the older players. Brian and Stevie were brilliant and I remember rumours that they had scouts out looking at them later in their football life. At least one of the guys we played with ended up having a trial for Chelsea although I can’t for the life of me remember his name. One guy was just huge. Even at that age you could tell he was going to be tall and when a kid gets the nick name ‘Sherman’ it doesn’t come as a surprise that he ended up playing and coaching for the EK Pirates american football team.

I won’t lie. I was never what you would call a fantastic player. I had great reflexes and my time in between the sticks was spent shot-blocking with the occasional amazing dive across the goal mouth to the tip the ball by for a corner kick. I couldn’t hold on to a ball and to this day I don’t have the confidence to run with it either.

One summers day both myself and my mate Billy were playing at a bit of grass at the end of my street and were convinced that a scout was watching us. We spent hours afterwards wondering who he was from and what fantastic shot or save would have caught his eye. Years later I found out that the guy was actually my neighbours son who was visiting but had been locked out whilst my neighbour was out. He laughed when I told him our story after all those years.

Then came the day we were dreading for a while. The local council sold off our ‘football pitch’ and they built sheltered housing for the elderly on it. We would have to walk twice the distance to our school in order to get to a red ash hockey pitch we could use instead. Needless to say we didn’t go there. We started playing on the hill at the end of my street. Even when we were chased by the police we still went back. The council ended up planting additional flower beds so that we couldn’t actually get a large enough area to play on… We still found a way though.

As the years moved on I finally made it into P6 and they decided to start the school football team back up. At that point we were playing most of our football at school in the loading bay below the school kitchen. It was about a quarter of the size of a 5-a-side pitch and we managed to play 10v10 on there at times. Shots on goal could come in from just about anywhere and at any time so my reflexes were getting a good work out but any time we moved up onto the full size pitch I was useless. I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t used to the size of the goals or if it was that I was that small I could only touch the cross bar if I took a run at it but I went from being a really good keeper to being someone that folk insisted not be allowed anywhere near the goals. I was always a good reader of the game even of I wasn’t the best actual player so I did eventually get the hang of playing 11-a-side on the full size pitch.

The school football team was run by three parents. Mr Paxton, Mr Clapperton and Mr McLaughlin. I have very vague memories of Mr McLaughlin playing for Dumfermline or some other lower division team that I’d heard of but never paid any attention to but Mr Paxton didn’t really know what to do. I was 10 years old at the time so what do I know about managing a team though. When Mr McLaughlin was involved we did circuit training and practiced dead ball situations but when it was just Mr Paxton we played 5’s in the Main hall or took penalties for the fun of it with our outfield players taking turns in goal. Craig McPhee, our captain in P7, took his turn in goals one evening only for the ball to be hit that hard that he broke his wrist against the bench we used as a goal. I’ll keep the rose tinted spectacles off. We were rubbish. I think there were something like 10 teams in the league we played in and the only one we could beat was The Murray Primary School and we loved going there for a game. It was the only school in East Kilbride that had a grass pitch at that point so it felt like we were playing at the end of our street.

We had some outstanding players in that team that year and to this day I don’t understand how we didn’t manage to do better. Craig Purden was possibly the best goal keeper in the league and in James Madden we had one of the best central midfielders as well but the rest of the team couldn’t hold back the opposition. We tried hard and we did have good players but without direction and any tactical know how the end results were usually inevitable. We were also threatened several times with complaints and recommendations that we be kicked out the league. Why you may ask were we receiving this sort of welcome? We had the ‘cheek’ to have a girl play for our team apparently. Usually there was no bother before a game and the schools were very good with providing some sort of separate changing facility for Catrina but by the end of the game and they’d seen how good she was the complaints usually started.

When i joined the team I moved from being a goal keeper to playing at right back. I still don’t know why I was put there as I could never keep up the pace and run up and down the wing like the other full backs we played against and I was never happy with our central defenders. They were good players but they struggled to play as a team and at times forgot that without linesmen you can’t pull the offside trap unless the player is that far offside the ref can spot it from half way across the pitch. So we went from them not communicating very well to both stepping out at the perfect time had we had linesmen giving the attacker that few yards head start that we could barely afford giving the speed of our defence. We leaked goals constantly and in one game a guy called Speedy ripped us to shreds whenever he decided to try and get past us. It was only Craig’s skills that stopped the number of goals we lost heading into double figures I think.

We ended up second bottom of the league that year.

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

I did this a while ago but never officially tagged anyone and as I’ve been tagged by Simple-Mindz I thought I’d do it again but properly this time.

• So anyway here are the rules:
  Link to the person that tagged you.
  Post the rules on your blog.
  Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
  Tag six random people and the end of your post-link to their blogs.

  Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
  Let the fun begin!

1. I passed Standard Grade General Science in P5 but never recieved a certificate for it. The P7 teacher in my school’s husband was shocked at the ‘new’ Standard Grade exams in the first year they were run at my local schools. He was convinced his first years could pass the exam and so ran them through the paper at the end of term and got a pass rate of 60-odd%. The P7 teacher in my school did the same thing with her pupils and I think they averaged out at about 50-odd%. My P5 teacher was convinced I’d be able to do it as well and came away with a 71% pass!

2. I managed to fail 1st year at Uni because my adviser couldnt tell the difference between Exploring the Cosmos in the Arts Dept and Astronomy in the Science Dept. Being self-taught Standard Grade and Higher biology and chemistry at the same time as studying Astronomy is one sure fire way of frying your brain quickly when all I wanted to do was look at pretty pictures of nebula. I think my best end of term exam result was 13%. The pass rate was so low they actually had to lower the level you needed to get to sit the final exam as they would have had only three people sitting the final exam otherwise.

3. I studying a martial art that we named Harry Karate after our instructor. He was a nutjob that hated his old instructor so decided to branch out himself and teach but mix in a little boxing. What mostly happend was he beat up kids for 3 hours a night twice a week. Was great fun seeing him getting slaughtered at the first (and last) competition we went to.

4. I was captain of my primary school football team and in my last game for the team almost ended Rangers and Scotland captain Barry Ferguson’s career before it started. We played his schools 7-aside team in the group stages of a competition in Strathclyde park and I managed to put him 6 foot in the air and he landed badly. His brother Derek, who also played for Rangers, was their manager and wasnt best pleased with me.

5. I have a rock that I like to go to and think things through when I have problems. Your surrounded by mountains that have been there for almost longer than Ican get my head around so any problems I ever have mean nothing compared to what they have seen. The problem is the location though as its 14 miles from the nearest bus stop down a glen near Glen Coe.

6. If I’m quiet its because i

Tell me 6 things about yourself and then tag 6 others to do the same

1. I passed Standard Grade General Science in P5 but never recieved a certificate for it

2. I managed to fail 1st year at Uni because my adviser couldnt tell the difference between Exploring the Cosmos in the Arts Dept and Astronomy in the Science Dept. Being self-teaching Standard Grade and Higher biology and chemistry at the same time as studying Astronomy is one sure fire way of frying your brain quickly when all I wanted to do was look at pretty pictures of nebula

3. I studying a martial art that we named Harry Karate after our instructor. He was a nutjob that hated his old instructor so decided to branch out himself and teach but mix in a little boxing. What mostly happend was he beat up kids for 3 hours a night twice a week. Was great fun seeing him getting slaughtered at the first (and last) competition we went to.

4. I was captain of my primary school football team and in my last game for the team almost ended Barry Fergusons career before it started. Played his schools 7-aside team at a competition in Strathclyde park and I managed to put him 6 foot in the air and he landed badly. His brother wasnt best pleased.

5. I have a rock that I like to go to and think things through when I have problems. This can be a problem in itself when its 14 miles from the nearest bus stop down a glen near Glen Coe.

6. If I’m quite its because i’m shy. I’m I’m loud its becuase im drunk. There doesnt appear to be a happy medium.

I nominate anyone that can be arsed to copy this and put their own 6 things up on thier own blog.

I have no idea what I did on friday night. I think it may have been spent watching Navy CIS but I could be wrong.

Saturday morning was supposed to go as follows:
Wake up at 7am (hahaha who you kidding…I’ve not needed an alarm clock since the beginning of March!”
Have the kids ready to go and in the car for 9.30
Look after the kids with Mo while Vonnie goes to Weight Watchers with Kirsty then look after Nairn when they go swimming.

What actually happened was the following:
Wake up at 5am with Nairn and not get him settled until just before 7am.
Get Vonnie up and out the door for 9.30 (they were giving the swimming a miss so I didnt need to go)
Vonnie got blocked in her parking space by an idiot neighbour for 10 minutes.
Vonnie turns back at Busby when she realises she’ll never make it to Paisley for 10:15.
Gets home and decideds to organise a meet up in Kelvingrove park to play softball.
Rush about after kids and make lunch then bomb it into glasgow.

We actually had a great day in the park, in the end about 20 folk turned up and we decided not use the baseballs but instead use the football that someone had brought. Amazingly you could still hit home runs with it!

Vonnie took Finn and Dev up onto the fountain only for them to run away from her anytime she tried to get them down. then about 2 seconds later some wee guy decided to climb to the top which brought many shouts of encouragement from the group.

A few photos can be found in Vicki’s gallery here.

Sunday was a non-event though with me settling down to watch a few episodes of Navy CIS, House and War of the Worlds I think. Should really have been finishing off the kitchen though but its coming along…

Vonnie licked ice cream off my nose in KFC last night. She insisted i stick that in my blog by the way

I’d been asked to help make up numbers for the Alt Nations forum football teams weekly 7’s game down at Ibrox as they’d lost almost a full team due to the Celtic game, Lee’s birthday and a few other crappy reasons. Anyway I’ve since found out that my football trainers have went west. I must have binned them when I moved into my flat so I was stuck with my Vans last night. I’d have killed myself if i’d have tried toplay inthem though. Thankfully Tony had about 50 spare pairs in the boot of his car and lent me a pai that fitted perfectly. I don’t know if I like the fell of these new football boots…its like a sock with a set of crampons stuck onthe bottom.

Anyway I impressed myself with my fitness level ie I didnt die. Shug was right in that you can start to feel your touch coming back to you just as times up. Don’t see me getting a regular game but I enjoyed myself. Think my badminton reflexes came back to me when I was in goals for a while…cant catch a ball to save my life but that ball wasn’t going anywhere near the back of the net whilst I was there. We won the game 4-1 I think.

Then at about 1am some guy right upstairs decided to stick his stereo on full blast and play songs about how great america is and start to shout random abuse into the street and throw some racist crap in as well. He lasted 20 minutes before the cops arrived. Considering the crap he was coming away with i’m surprised he lasted 20 minutes without one of the other neighbours killing him.

Well that was a lot less painless than I thought it would be. I was expecting to be thrown to the Lions yesterday but everything actually went quite well.

Left the offie about 3pm on Wednesday to catch the 5pm flight. I was a bit worried that as I dont really know Steven that well but that I do know we’re both quite quiet it would be a long trip but we bumped into Willie Hunter from work in the lounge and everyone seemed to liven up. The flight was amazingly only 5 minutes late which is a first I think but despite free drinks and munchies in the lounge the meal on the flight wasnt that great. Beef in oyster sauce promised a lot but erally failed to deliver. 2/10 purely for the effort.

After the trip on the Paddington express we jumped down to the tube to catch the central line alnog to Victoria with the intent on hitting the pub for the Chelsea v Liverpool game…but we didnt account for major delays on 80% of the lines. Finally got a train only for it to wait for ever at each station it stopped at until we hit Gloucester Road (I think) where about 300 drunken partying Liverpool fans tried to get on the train in an effort to get to the match. It was about 7pm at this point and they were still miles from the ground singin, shouting and playing drums on the side/roof/doors of the train. This was until one of them realised it was the wrong train and they all bolted out the door leaving only a manky fez on the floor as proof that they were there.

Finally made it to the hotel…and what a hotel. The “Rubens at the Palace” to give it the full name the staff used. The room was smallish but comfortable but it was literally 100m from the office and about 250m from Buckingham Palace. Went for a wee wander to stretch my legs with my camera stopping outside the palace to phone Vonnie. I’d only been out of Scotland a few hours and I missed her. Took a few photos of the sights and then wandered to get something to eat with the intent of just heading back to the hotel for an early night.

On the way back from Burger King though Steven spied me wandering past the pub and dragged me in for the second half of the football. Ended up chatting to a drunken Chelsea fan who’d sold his tickets for ?600 outside the ground and was busy trying to drink it all. Bought me a pint so I cant complain After an entertaining game (or was it the pub that wa entertaining rather than the game?) I headed back to the hotel to phone Vonnie again as I’d cut short the first phonecall when my stomach started eating my from the inside I was that hungry with the intent to have a nightcap in the hotel bar with my complimentary drink voucher (just as well I had that as at ?4 a pint or ?8 a double vodka and coke I wouldnt be buying anything.) I’d wangled an extra voucher though so two pints later I was very sleepy and headed off to bed.

Thursday morning brought me back down to ground as I didnt sleep very well and being slightly hungover I had to head to the main office to print off a few bits I’d forgotten and thenhead round to the satellite office at the far end of Victoria Street. There were loads of armed police about and we thought it was to do with the Rail office as there was about 8 of them grouped around it but it was jus the usual armed presence near westminster. Most of them only had a pistol so the guys with the MP5’s really stood out and each and everyone was kitted out differently but all to the same kind of standard ie surefire flash handgrip, plain iron sites, mag clamped double mags etc. Except for this one guy that what I thought was a russian holosight atached to the top rail. After a second pass I realised it was just a fancy looking reflex sight with a little extra paddign and armour on the casing. Steven looked at me ratehr oddly when I tried to explain this…cant blame him really

The time with the Commission for Africa was busy but actually went really well. Bob Geldoff was supposedly in for a meeting with the head guy but we never got to see him never mind meet him. Got a few things to chase up today at work but other than that I think most people came away happy…except for the girl whos network cable I nicked so we could use the laptop upstairs

The trip home was doomed from the start. We’d managed to finish on time in the office and without even running we caught both the tube and the express without having to wait more than a minute at each station. When we got to Heathrow we were hit with an hour delay because some twat ran a tug into the front wheel of the plane and bent it so we had to wait for a replacement to arrive
It did mean I witnessed probably the weirdest and most amazing sunset I think I’ll ever see though. Basically there was a low blanket of cloud totally blocking the sun from below. From above this looked like your a-typical red sky at night sunset with low level clouds under the sun rather than actual ground. But then there was another blanket of cloud a couple of hundred feet up again which we climbed through blocking out below again but this tme you couldnt see the sun at all…just the sort of light afterglow you get after the suns went below the horizon. And then the clouds slowly started to break up and it looked like the world below was on fire. The colours were that intense it was unbelievable. I think the closest you could come would be to describe it like a magma flow from a volcano with the solid crust breaking up as it moved and letting the bright orange of the molten magma through. Made it back to Vonnie’s flat after the plane crew trying to kill me with Moroccan Chicken with cous cous and was so glad to be back.

Today is payday and the last day of the working week. Can it get much better than this?