It was a beautiful morning. Just the kind of weather I like. Cloudy, but not actually raining. Completely still. A little autumn nip in the air, but not really cold. In America, we’d call it football weather.
And Sam had a football game. The international sort. He met one of his teammates on the tram on the way there and I had a chat with his dad. They didn’t start for a long time after we got there. I escaped the locker room as the other kids and their parents began to arrive. It gets crowded in there.
I walked out to the middle of the field and looked at the Panelaks all around. A plane was flying overhead. You could see, at a distance, a really cool gold domed church tower, with scaffolding around it. It was the center of the universe.
Then, the game started. As I say in the title, 17-1. I blame the coach. Sam didn’t start. I understand that. I was always the last picked for sports for the obvious reason that I wasn’t any good. Remember Les Nesman having the flashback to his childhood during the softball game? That was me. So, if Sam takes after me, he will probably not be a great athlete.
Sam is a big fan of Captain Tsubasa
But, actually, I think he’s a much better athlete than I was at his age, and herein lies the coaches mistake. The other team got a goal pretty quickly, and they were totally dominating the play. Sam went in. Things shifted. They fought back and they got a goal. Sam’s goal. Tie game.
Then, the coach took Sam out and they went down 4-1 in about 5 minutes. Sam went in and (it seemed to me) they played even for a few minutes. No scores, anyway. Then he came out and they went down by another 3 or 4 points. Sam was in and out after that, but it didn’t matter.
So, I may just be seeing things with a father’s bias, but I think if the coach had played him more, they wouldn’t have lost so badly. They still would have lost. Those other kids were good.
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