Games Bond

I recently attended a wonderful 50 year reunion of a group of players who took part in a marathon indoor soccer game in Coalisland. That game in November 1972 lasted all of 45 hours, and captured the imagination of local people, with hordes calling into the Parochial Centre over that weekend, including young people coming home from dances in the early hours of the morning.

It was all to raise money for a mini-bus for the youth and in the hope of making the Guinness Book of Records*.

Eighteen players took part, playing for five hours followed by a four-hour food and nap break with mattresses and sleeping bags behind the stage.

Covering the re-union for the ‘Herald was a labour of love.

As a bright eyed 12-year-old boy, I remember calling into the marathon game several times.

Sadly two of the players, Paddy McMahon and Noel (‘Nogo’) Magee have since departed. A few were unable to attend but there were 13 of the players there, with a special bond from a shared experience. It was mighty fare.

A great character, Stanley Telford almost morphed back to that lad in his early 20s, as he told how he bent the ball around the wall to score a stunning goal… “I bent it like Stanley!” he explained, “long before Beckham was born!”

Tony Ferguson remembered making an “incredible fingertip save” and after he sat down, turned to me and smiled, “The older I get, the better I was!”

While on being asked if he wanted to say anything, former Fianna player and double championship winning manager Brendan Hampsey quipped, “What happened behind the stage stays behind the stage!”

How many Vietnam veterans does it take to change a light bulb? I don’t know… You don’t know because you weren’t there man, you weren’t there!

I have even felt like an outsider when standing at a match with my own brother and two of his team-mates from the championship winning sides of 89/90. One is acutely aware they share that special experience… a bond.

In 2016, doing my best impression of Al Pacino in ‘Any Given Sunday’, on the week of the county final I told our senior Ladies team, “Girls, in years to come you’ll be in a supermarket buying nappies and look across the aisle and see one of your team-mates and your mind will go back to this week and these special memories, make the best of them…” something along those lines.

Apparently the nappy comment was bizarre but I’m old school!

And so it came to pass… every time I meet star forward Una in Newell Stores, we laugh and say, “that goal!” (she scored to win the cup) and revive fabulous memories.

When those 25 year jubilee teams are represented at All Ireland and county finals, you can be sure the bond and the affection between the players runs deep.

Superstars athletes Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry were supreme sportsmen at the very top who had the shared experience others can only dream of. They starred in a Gillette advertisement that would have left barmy downhill skier Eddie the Eagle totally out of place.

However, it isn’t always a bond that holds successful or happy memories. Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce missed penalties in the World Cup semi-final defeat to Germany in 1990 while Gareth Southgate, current England manager, missed in 1996 losing to the same opposition in the semi-final of the 1996 Euros.

Months after the ‘96 tournament, Southgate appeared in a Pizza Hut ad with a bag over his head while Waddle and Pearce called to the waitress, “Miss! Miss! Miss!”

Pearce then encourages Southgate, “Come on Gareth, it only took me six years to get over it, have some pizza!”

Southgate removes the bag, eats the pizza and chirps, “Thanks boys I feel much better now” before getting up and walking into a pillar, to which the other two laugh and Pearce jokes, “This time he’s hit the post!”

England fans, still traumatised from those defeats to Germany, were furious. Southgate later said he regretted taking part in the advertisement. It certainly was a shared experience that forged a bond.

School also brings many memories that are recalled for decades.

In Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘The Sally Rod’, he meets childhood classmate Duffy on the Main Street in Granard. Although pensioners, a memory floods back from the senior infants’ room when they were all of seven summers in short trousers. It is a stark and unpleasant shared memory of being beaten with a sally rod by Miss Walls for ‘dirty talk’… “Well for Jesus sake, cried Duffy, coming at me with his stick in the air and two wide open arms, for Jesus sake, do you mind the sally rod?”

Occasionally, I meet up in Costa with my old friend Tony. The conversations often go back to the class of ‘71 and paraphrasing Elton John, to celebrate that ‘We’re still standing!’

*Alas the representative from the Guinness Book of Records failed to to turn up at the Coalisland marathon soccer game and the record breaker was not recorded.