Primary League Football - view from behind

Not a great photo but ohmigod what a day!


For more years than I care to count our (very small) school's football team has been proud to take home the wooden spoon from the school football league. Week after week they have been thrashed 6-0. 6-0, 6-0. We spent matches praying for the sixth goal to go in the net to end the pain more quickly. Each week the heroic coach (none other than Northern's man) has remained mostly chipper and enthusiastic, picking out something (anything!) from each game to praise and build on. Every week for years now they have turned up.

Sometimes up against school teams who have picked the best from 900 pupils (in our school if you've got legs you're in the team) they have kept turning up and to be honest I can't think what keeps them going other than love of the game. There have been weeks when the clueless younger players have chosen to skip towards the ball rather than run, they've wombled up the pitch in the wrong direction, fed the ball to their opponents, tackled their team mates and scored own goals. One of my own sons notoriously ran head long into a wall and regularly left the pitch with shooting pains, howling (later the abdominal pain was diagnosed as a stitch rather than the adrenalin fueled heart attack we had suspected). The team has also been given a rather tragi-comic sheen by their kit which was provided by a sponsor from south who gave us youth sizes resulting in all of the team flailing about with sleeves four inches below their hands.

Today however we held each match to a draw and finished the season with 14 points and we finished 18 out of 20 rather than 20th. An unbelievable result. Over the years the parents of our school have become notoriously noisy supporters and other parents edge away when we get into full yelling mode but each time they have scored this season the place has errupted. On several occassion today I noticed children passing the ball to each other and goals were scored. Somehow they are beginning to get their acts together.

The day could barely get any better when we were approached by one of the parents who wanted to sponsor some kit for the team! Just the socks mind. But you've got to start somewhere.