Vintage Material: Potential, A Feast of Recyclable Scraps, Part 1.
First Things First, First Touches Later
Childhood, the first left turn on memory lane, is home to, if nothing else, dreams and their possibilities. For some of us, childhood was also home to limitless potential. Limitless potential that coupled itself so easily with the dreams we sheltered from the rain of growing up ‘ordinary’. There may be more of us than we care to admit.
I can’t remember the first time I kicked a ball, does anyone? What I do remember are vague memories of running after a round object on the dust-coated streets of Lagos, aged 4, with my cousins, and other children. It was only some months later that in my newly native Liverpool, I would revel in the thrilling and unforgiving arena of the English School playground. I would become no stranger to grazed knees, elbows, and wet blue paper towels.
I began my playing career – as unironically as possible – as a centre-back in St. Michael’s Catholic Primary School’s Under-10s. When I wasn’t busy shivering, I, mini-fro in tow, dispensed my defensive duties. What I brought to the backline remains a mystery to me, even today.
Even so, it won me some moderate success. I represented the school’s Under-11’s, an age group above mine, in the same position. In the same year, I was one of two selected from that season’s Under-10s School County Cup winning squad to trial to become a ‘Schoolboy’. A ‘Schoolboy’ begins their journey by representing their local county with the English Schools’ Football Association coordinating the potential advancement of some to the international level.
I fear it was more than being kitted out, head to toe, in the burgundy and gold of Arsenal’s 05/06 Home kit, that kept me out of the next round. I didn’t then tread the path of once-upon-a-time Liverpool Schoolboys, Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, and Robbie Fowler.
In a mildly shocking – to me – series of events, I moved primary schools and found myself and my parent’s mortgage in a completely new postcode. In football parlance, I guess my buyout clause had been triggered and Croxteth Community Primary School had secured my services till the next Summer Transfer Window.
It was in this new team and, before I forget my education, school, that I was plucked from the obscurity of the backline – again – for a trial game for Everton FC’s Academy. In the dressing room I was gently ushered towards the number 9 jersey and played as a lone striker up top.
I had virtually no experience in this position and while I won the penalty that secured our one-nil victory, I didn’t play again for Everton until my early 20’s. There was something, somewhere, of an apology, when my coach reported that there had been ‘a mix up’ – that was all.
If you hadn’t guessed the above was a collection of cautionary tales of potential, of flirting with promise. Almost two decades on, however, my passion and pure enjoyment of the game has not abated. It is with this spirit that I’ve decided to inaugurate a project that I’ve christened ‘Potential, Feasting on Scraps’.
I would like to push myself to become an amateur athlete, emphasis on amateur, pursuing whatever is left of my potential, playing my favourite sport at the limits of my technical and playmaking abilities. Limits which I am excited to find and probe, fully aware of my age, time constraints, sparse equipment, and my neurodivergence.
Alongside this, I hope to put down my journey in writing, from time to time, with verve, bullish energy, and indiscriminate detail. Because if there’s one thing I know how to handle, it’s a pen.
*blows whistle*
