Fall, head-gash expose flaws in my footballing skills

I played football at different levels. If you are looking at my picture, in particular at my midriff, and are laughing your head off, then that, as usual, is your business. It’s a free world, and I can assure you that the liberal side of my politics allows me to tolerate that from you. And I can also tell you that I know that you are laughing your head off because when I said I played football at different levels, all you football buffs, with a mind so permanently skewed by the English Premiership, probably went: “Well, he’s aw’ right. He’s played a few Sunday-Sunday football, and maybe some Mickey Mouse league, and now thinks he’s a footballer!”

Some indulgees would even go as far as to really rub it in by singing: “He shoots, he scores … that’s the football he plays … we know him for that … but that’s not the Premiership … nor is it the Champions League!” At this point, a rescue will come from those non-misguided indulgees who are always quick to offer the cliché(ic) benefit of the doubt, by suggesting that I was probably one of those stars that they missed out on when they were growing up. Yeah, right … the story is now all coming together. We have a dissonance problem in our hands.

Ok, hold all your fires. Whoever said playing football at different levels has to mean playing in organised league? I played football in primary school. I played in high school. And I played football at university, and as far as I am concerned that’s good enough to qualify as having played the game at different levels – it’s a journey through a man’s life as it were. All of you with your souls completely sold to the English Premiership can eat your hearts out, especially those of you who really haven’t kicked a ball! Or have you, really?

All this talk has been brought about by me, myself and I alone through a combination of a certain amount of non-damaging self-delusion which has allowed me to continue to convince myself that whatever I have touched once I have mastered and, as a result, that I should not necessarily return to it (especially if it was something that sufficiently grabbed my interest). Fellow indulgees, this has really been my lot. It served me well in school when, after reading a text/note once, I would refuse to go back to it because after the first read I strongly felt there was nothing more interesting or new to discover by returning to it. This was particularly made worse if I had been at a class where the subject was taken by a teacher/lecturer.

Now, in this my adult life, because I had been involved competitively in a number of sports (including the yearly Ikoyi Run at King’s College; and I don’t care if you think it’s a Mickey Mouse Marathon, because I’m quite sure Bashorun JK Randle, Alhaji Femi Okunnu and A.K. Amu won’t agree with any such description), I have continued to live in this non-toxic delusion that you can bring them on anytime. You know, I kinda feel, sometimes, a little bit like the type who will scream, once a competitive game was announced: “Yeah! Bring it on!” You will have to wait to find out if that was a justified boast or just an empty one. I guess my confidence had been recently boosted at Heritage Resort Beach where I had a rare opportunity (by every standard of measurement in my present incarnation as a full-blooded adult) at a few games of table tennis, where it turned out that I gave a master class to my good friend, Head Candy. It later turned out, though, that Head Candy was a complete novice at ping pong, which left the joke squarely on my plate because all I keep hearing in my head since trouncing Head Candy are these words: “Agbaya (that’s Yoruba – in this particular instance – for showing more skills than you should playing against a total novice at table tennis, especially at the beach).” You can add to that, to drive home the point that I have no shame showing my table tennis skills to a novice: “One day, Phillip Isakpa, you will get your comeuppance in the hands of those who really play table tennis, for they will expose you for what you truly are – living on your twenty-something-odd year old skills!” I wouldn’t know whether to cry or laugh at that one, but I suppose that in the spirit of sportsmanship, and the much abused “No victor, no vanquished” sloganeering, I am actually meant to take it on the chin, and feel funky about it, too. Which I’m actually now going to do.

Yet, this is really about my footballing skills letting me down, isn’t it? I am sure bad belle indulgees, who did not take enough laughing gas in their high school chemistry/physics laboratory, are not finding this funny and as such can’t wait to come “face-to-face” with the moment when I convinced myself that my footballing skills may have done an AWOL (absence without official leave!) on me.

“Let’s hear it, Phillip!” That’s you demanding. “You have to tarry a little longer.” That’s me responding in a way that’s reminiscent of that Maxi Priest song, “Just a little bit longer …” Don’t blame me if you can’t remember, or worse, if that wasn’t your time! You can try doing catch-up by checking some back music catalogues. It’s your call.

Some years ago, on holiday in Lagos from the University of Manchester, a former colleague at Vanguard Newspaper, who was fairly getting on a bit, asked if I got involved in some games of football in the UK. “Oh, not at all. I’m concentrating on my studies,” I told him.

“Ah, if it’s me I would have joined a club and made my way into the league,” he said. I thought it was amusing, and said to no one in particular: “When you hear a player has gone for medical before being signed on by a club, it’s not only injuries they look out for. They have machines that check out their bones for how long they have been around!”

And if you are not caught by that machine, you are likely to be caught somehow. As I continue on what is now turning out to always be a working holiday, I have found that with good weather it is difficult to stay away from the park and be tempted to do a little run around with the football. That’s what I did during the week. Wearing that non-toxic self-delusionary hat, I went all out to display some dribbling moves and some runs on a park’s basketball court. I ran from one end to the other, weaving and shoving from one side to the other. And then it happened.

One costly wrong move. Just one wrong costly move of trying to show off a dribble move that I used to do so easily, and which I deluded myself into thinking I could now easily re-enact, saw me tumbling over and falling backwards, my full body weight hitting the ground. My head hit hard on the concrete basketball court and it suffered a gash. Dazed and a little confused, with blood gushing from the centre of my head, my shame was complete.

So, right now I am taking it easy, carefully choosing where my long-abandoned talents are brought alive for the purpose of showboating. And now that my self-deprecation is complete, I’m sure you’ll excuse me if I spend the remainder of my holiday detoxing myself, trying to regain my midriff, treating the gash on my head and making sure that I do not suffer any delayed concussion.

08052202354

phillip@s19080.p615.sites.pressdns.com/en