Jonny McCambridge: Memories of a lapsed football star

This was a star however, which had a very limited illumination. The theatre of dreams which I lit up was my primary school playground.

From as early as I can remember, I was (in my opinion at least) the best player in the class. I played soccer all the time. There was a game before school began, another at breaktime, a kickaround after lunch and then a match while I waited for the school bus in the evening. When my friends and I were not playing football, we were usually talking about it.

At home my brother and I competed against each other for hours in our back yard. Even when I had to stay indoors, I was often kicking a rolled-up pair of socks up and down the hallway.

I scored hundreds of goals in the playground. I dribbled like Maradona, passed like Platini and shot like Zico. I am not sure that the idea ever occurred to me that I wouldn’t end up playing centre forward for Manchester United when I grew up.

My footballing career peaked when I won a little plastic trophy for being the Most Promising Under-11 player at a mini tournament in Ballycastle after scoring 17 goals in three games. I was better than anyone else I knew and, I suppose, I assumed this would always be the case.

But reality soon intervened. I went to a larger secondary school where there were several other kids as good, or better at football than I was. I still joined the matches in the playground but was now only one of a number of promising players.

An even harsher lesson came when I attempted to join a team and play organised football as a teenager. Most of the other boys in my age group had grown tall and strong, while I remained small.

Kids who, a couple of years earlier I was running rings around, now simply muscled me off the ball or kicked me. I played one match for a local team on the left wing where a much larger boy spent most of the 90 minutes telling me that he was going to break my ‘effing legs’.

More often coaches simply did not pick me because I was not tall or strong enough. I learnt that the anarchic football played in the cramped playground bore little resemblance to the structured game on wide open pitches where everyone had an allotted role.

The confidence that I had possessed when playing in more familiar surroundings deserted me. With it so did my touch and skill, which was all that I had really had in my game. I began to dread the ball coming in my direction because of the abuse I would receive from players on my own team if I made a mistake.

Not only would I never make it as a professional footballer, but I realised that I didn’t even enjoy playing the game anymore. The fun had gone out of it. The star had burnt out by the age of 16. I stopped. I have not played football in more than 30 years.

When I became a father I occasionally wondered if part of this journey would include me passing my football knowledge on to my young son. I mused about sunny Saturday afternoons spent kicking a ball around the back yard while we bonded over a shared experience.

But it never worked out that way. My boy’s love is computer games and he has never really leant towards sports. I don’t push him in a direction in which he doesn’t want to travel or expect him to support my team if his heart is not in it.

I have only seen him play football once. It was at a birthday party a couple of years ago when an impromptu game was organised among the boys in his class. I watched the louder kids chase the ball around while my son cowered near the corner, afraid to get involved. It was a painful experience and it required all of my self-control not to run onto the pitch and give him a giant hug.

But recently, things have started to change a bit. My son has mentioned a few times about the football matches in his school playground; how some of his friends are now taking part. He doesn’t want to be left out. He told his mum that he would like to play but doesn’t know how.

So, for the first time in several decades, I find myself in a sports shop buying a football. The grass is saturated with the November rain, so I lead my son out to the tarmac area outside our back gate.

I drop the ball and try to control it. It feels strange at first, as if there are giant pillows around my feet. But gradually, the touch starts to come back. The once familiar feeling that I can do whatever I want with this orb of inflated leather begins to return.

The game is alien to my son, so I know this is going to take time and patience. I start by showing him how to control the ball, to trap it and then pass it with the side of his foot, rather than the toe.

We practise tackling over and over, my boy laughing as I try and go past him but leave the ball behind. I tell him to keep his eyes on it, to get his foot and body in the way.

We do some passing and shooting exercises. It begins to rain after a while, but my boy says that he is having fun and wants to keep going. I set some cones on the road and he inexpertly dribbles around them.

Then we play a game. A one-a-side match where I am handicapped by having to play up the hill towards the cul-de-sac. We run around until we are both breathless and it is unclear whether we are more soaked from sweat or the rain.

Eventually, it is time to go inside. I put my arm around my son, wondering if he is any closer to being confident enough to take part in the playground game. As we walk to the front door, I tell him that if the game is fun, then he should play. If it isn’t fun, then he doesn’t have to.

He looks up at me expectantly.

‘Did I do well daddy?’

‘Yes, you did buddy. You’re a star.’