Star Soccer

Let me take you back, right back actually to Saturday 17^th January 1981. It’s about 9.40am and like most teenagers I’m having a problem dragging my wiry little carcass out of bed!

I pop my head out from under the bed sheets, reach out and pull aside my bedroom curtains to get a glimpse of what it’s doing outside. It looks like another cold one, a thin layer of ice appears to have set on the outside of the window and small pools of condensation have started to settle on the window sill. Like most folk on our road double glazing was yet to grace the façade of our humble abode.

Wild Horses

For three days we have been entrenched in this wet and filthy hollow, the rain is relentless and claws at our skin as we ready ourselves, staring skywards with empty eyes in silent contemplation of the scene we will face once the order is given and the whistle blows.

At times the silence is deafening. As you sit waiting, your thoughts, induced by an unfathomable fear, charge thunderously through your mind like a stampede of wild horses, and then they are gone, like the clouds in the sky.

Twice during these last few days we have been expecting the order. Twice we have prepared ourselves mentally for this moment, standing at the foot of the abyss, assuring ourselves that our artillery will do its worst, striking at the heart of our enemy’s defences, clearing the way as we advance in our quest for territorial gain.