Over the other end wall was less a back garden, more a jungle. It could shoot out beyond one end wall and go harmlessly into the estate, possibly rolling into someone’s front garden, barely harming their shrubbery and be easily retrieved. It could rifle up the roof and roll back to the safety of the playing area. Our back-yard arena was surrounded by walls on three sides and was then fully enclosed by the rear of the house.Ī football funted at a certain velocity and altitude from any point in the yard had four choices. The fear of losing your balls and not getting them back. It is a wonderful tale about, among other things, the delights of holding a new football (the smell of the leather, the shape, the bounce, the desire not to get its surface panels scuffed too soon), albeit it has the most disgraceful and despicable endings in all of literature.Īnyway it brought back to mind my own trauma. Mari is not that well known here but I came across him by chance recently and was delighted to find out he once played for the Osvaldo Soriano Football Club, otherwise known as the the Italian writers’ national football team, something we shamefully don’t have here, despite having authors such as Adrian Duncan, whose most recent short story collection is named Midfield Dynamo and who once played for Longford Town.Īnyway, Mari’s short story concerns the concerns a group of schoolboys have about inadvertently kicking their ball over a high wall during lunchtime games. I was reminded of it when reading the excellent short story by Italian writer Michele Mari, The Soccer Balls of Mr Kurz.
There is a wrinkle to this reminisce, of course there is.
Our back windows were only single glazing but surprisingly durable (we tested them many times with wayward half volleys) but it was probably the fact that my parents were the least likely to murder their offspring if one did get smashed that I got to play most of my three-goals-in career at a home venue. Low participation often meant the action moved to my own back yard, which had the advantage of actual rudimentary goalposts instead of breeze blocks, although the net was more for decoration than decreasing ball speed or interfering with its trajectory. Growing up in an estate this patch was literally ‘the green’, where if numbers were high enough, tournaments - often lop-sided ones, where some players favoured picking their nose over tackling - could flourish. This was of course interspersed with our own endeavours on the patch of green (brown around the goal area).
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