sport

Season’s greetings. (& farewell).

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Goodbye, it is, to most of that – most of that cricket, in any event. Age, infirmity and *life choices* have pointed me towards part-time work, but “my god” (as Sean Kelly might say) it hasn’t felt like that.

Selection sessions, winter nets then a belter of a summer on junior pathways: seeking ‘extras’ here and there to top up the dollars supply. Still loving it and still feeling like I can relate (and make a meaningful contribution) despite the swathe of geological time between me and The Lads – and it has mostly been lads. Overnighters at Brecon and Aber – the latter still amongst my favourite sporting gambols – and tremendously disparate match days or squad days from April to late August.

Objective A, as always, to make these wee humans fall in love with the idea (the need!) to move, commit, to ‘look after their mates.’ Objectives B-Z around feeding their sense that this charging about is fabulous and natural and must be an enriching, evolving, lifelong way of being. So in this cricket-thing, be a better bowler – I hope I can help; I have questions. And be a better batter (I hope I can help, but show me what you got). And be quicker and more attentive and more agile in the field – this will help with everything. Being active helps with everything.

Not sure if I’ve chosen to be the guy who is friendly and daft, who works at or close to the entry-level for hard-ball cricket, or if that niche chose me. (Every year I coach various age-groups but overwhelmingly the earthlings in front of me are 10 or 11). Am neither frustrated nor intimidated by the idea that *therefore* maybe I don’t work in Performance Sport. (Partly because maybe I do?) And, despite being mid-spectrum between clown and instructor I am deeply conscious of the responsibility coaches at this stage hold, towards supporting confidence in those who may often be shit-scared of the ball. I’ve had a fifty-year love affair with the feel of a new cricket ball but few juniors aged 10 remain unintimidated by that sacred nut. They know it hurts – or can do. And that fear (of course) makes getting hurt a whole lot more likely.

But in my entire coaching career – I dunno, thirty-odd years, now? – I have only seen two or three players genuinely hurt by the ball. One, perhaps inevitably, got an ‘egg’ above his temple; another an extreeeemely sore shin. No broken fingers or hands. Plenty scuffed or grazed elbows and knees… but ver-ry few injuries down to the pill itself. Loads of theatrical falls-after-the-event – and this maaay bee increasing, for which I blame Premier League footballers. It may well be politically incorrect to talk of ‘drama queens’, these days, but we are seeing some of that, for sure.

Kids are great though, eh? Still mad; still frantic or wonderfully free; still eating crap and listening less than you’d like.

Feeble digression – because it meant quite a lot. A young female coach recently told a small group of us coaches at a particular festival that she’d never seen kids listen like my group listened to me. I was touched by that. Hope it’s because I’m keeping it simple enough, appropriate enough: suspect it’s also because there’s always a joke – a giggle – in the pipeline. But yeh. I was touched by that.

Kids are great. Be honest, you want to run on and punch them when they get The Wildest of Run-outs *after wickets have been tumbling* but it happens. When the universe is screaming JUST HOLD and the coach is preaching calm and concentration. It happens because 10 year-olds are particularly (though not exclusively) vulnerable to Psychotic Contagion and they do ridicu-stuff when stressed. It’s bloody frustrating but also fabulously fascinating how often young players march out there, often too quickly, bat in hand, before succumbing to The Most Reckless Shot in Living Memory – a shot they’ve resolutely put away through 14 weeks of winter training then two spookily encouraging squad days. But the moment comes and they kinda want it over, one way or another*. They swish. And it is over.

(*Apologies to regular readers. Have repeatedly described this moment in the same or similar way. But it does fascinate me. And it does feel like they want it over).

The frequency of this event is startling and rich. That volume speaks to the power of the scrambled mind – across sports, across life. I love that one of the jobs for any coach/mentor/teacher (different roles, I appreciate) is to reconcile that sensational and cruel interface between a moment’s anxiety and the expression or execution of a skill.

It’s theoretically possible for a coach to be life-changing around this; by being sensitive to a player’s frailty (or otherwise) and providing a lead, a word and/or an environment which mitigates against ‘mind-less failure’ and towards confident execution. Mostly, in my experience, we fail, in the sense that our players continue to get out, with nerves being central to the dismissal. But supporting the player, building the environment, reinforcing the necessary skills can and does impact upon this – positively. ‘Grown-up’ players often reflect on how enjoyable and supportive their early experiences in the game are… and how important a particular coach was, in a) instilling or inspiring confidence and b) (therefore) kickstarting a journey they now know will be decades long. So go find me a job that’s more rewarding than that.

When not coaching I’ve been playing or travelling to play. Hilarious, given my age. But Seniors Sport – Seniors Cricket – *really is* a thing and I’m privileged and proud to have fallen into it.

I had almost no adult playing career because football, family life and work obscured that possibility. So I’ve been playing catch-up for the last three seasons, often alongside really good players who have had (I kid you not) half a century of Proper Cricket. I loved bowling as a kid and I still do: I’ve come back to it. Part of me still thinks I’m John Snow – or maybe Mike Hendrick, a less combative sort, from memory. I ‘run in’, or more exactly perhaps, I have failed so far to capitulate to bowling the leg-spin I know (actually) I could bowl. Because I love the feeling of a new cricket ball in my hand. I like and maybe even want the challenge of bowling the first over.

Mostly I’ve done okay, for mighty Llanrhian CC and for Wales 60s 3s and 4s. Unsurprisingly, I’m kinda play-cricket averse (us old guys know when we’ve bowled ok, yes?) so I’m not gonna quote stats at you. There have been highs and lows, including scrambling the winning run off the last ball of a 45 over semi-final game for Wales and then losing in the last over the following week(!) (Took three wickets in that final but was disappointed to concede significantly more runs than I would have liked. But hey, that’s sport. Kent were good and it really could have gone either way).

Enjoy my club cricket at an especially idyllic, mad-rural club but have found the camaraderie (and yeh, the craic) with Wales Seniors to be a revelation. So much so that at some stage I will surely write about it. Said it many times to many people over the last year or two but I’ve played a lot of sport: never enjoyed any of it as much as I’ve enjoyed the games with our posse of Superannuated Taffs. It’s a brotherhood I’m proud and privileged to belong to.

Town.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Fan-dom. Funny old game, eh? Maybe particularly when you’re a part-timer (like me), living 340 miles from the object of your viceral-tribal lurv-thing, or whatever it is.

Town. Grew up there and went to virtually every home game, aged 10-15. Then plenty more aged 15-22. Then on special occasions; ‘home visits’.

Been in Wales, see, for forty years or more. (And what a glorious privilege it’s been). So family life – my own, kids etc – got in the way of journeys Up North and back in time. But been doing more, largely due to our mum’s illness, and it’s all tugging a bit.

With every visit the realisations multiply, somehow. Unconscious or inexplicable truths around the magnitude of early life, early mates. Might not be the case for everybody but clear to me now that those mates from Primary School were and are about as good and as key as you’re ever gonna get. Torn between eulogising them and moving on: the universe probably needs to hear about the fabulous ordinary guys who have carried me through life, and will probably carry me out of it, unsung. But too intrusive of their quietness to go naming it. Too invasive of their unshowy, implacably honest ground.

All this feeds in to football. Those individuals; our tribe. I walk the genuinely grim or grimy streets around Blundell Park, on *that mission*: to go support the lads. (Yes they do finally have a women’s team but I’m too late and too far away to participate in that welcome ‘innovation’). The lads, who used to be Stuart Brace and Matt Tees before Terry Donovan and Mike Brolly became the boys Vernam, Rose and Warren. Six times I’ve walked in there, in the last year, through but with the other daft buggers in their Town clobber. Dads. Grandads. Mums. Daughters. All kinda sounding the same. All wanting the same and feeling some kind of connection: to this Town; to this place.

Football. I hate loads about it – the cheating, the money, the ‘Authorities’ near and far. The 21st century moral black hole of it. But walking briskly in, as you do, to Grimsby Town FC, at Blundell Park Cleethorpes is a wonderful, grounding pleasure. And it registers win lose or draw.

Last night I couldn’t be there. And/but they were on the tellybox. Tranmere. We’re 9th, they’re 16th in the table, or were. I’m watching from Pembrokeshire.

It looks a decent night – and the commentator says as much – before soon changing his tune. (You’re right up against the Humber/North Sea estuary multiplex, generally haunted by apocalyptic, cod-hurling ‘showers’. We soon got one). Important game for both sides; the brief interviews with the respective managers reinforced that view. Artell for GTFC thoughtful in that articulate, passive-aggressive way that he has.

Town have been dropping-off, results-wise, despite having a good coach and a solid, possibly even exceptional wider culture. Whether it’s a dip in confidence, or the presence of TV cameras, who knows, but Grimsby are poor in the first half. The squad has as many players who look good on the ball as the top handful of sides in the division but they fell into that awful lower-league hoofing-thing. Almost every contact with the ball was a ‘clearance’. It was Sunday League. Tranmere were better *and* they were winning every second ball. (So not only were Town failing to play to their footballing strengths, they were failing to compete). No complaints that Tranmere lead 1-0 at the break.

I’m a coach and slinger of wild opinions so let’s get into this. Warren, Turi, Vernam and Rose are good players at this level. And more broadly Artell has deliberately gathered a squad who can play patient, skilful (dare I say it?) intelligent football. Phases of passing. Good movement. Ball into feet. Rehearsed plays. I’ve watched them do it, often impressively. Last night they were without their best player, McEachran, who sits and passes and turns and makes the thing tick. But Turi – the guy tasked with filling the McEachran-shaped hole – can also play. Last night, for much of the game, Pym, the keeper and the likes of Warren (unusually and disappointingly) were clattering the ball over his head, bypassing the central midfield.

This is ok if it works. Last night, for 45 mins plus, it was bloody awful. Turi failed to show, or impose his will on the frankly amateurish chaos around him. Rose almost literally never got a touch, reinforcing the belief that he simply can’t play unless Town are threading balls in to feet. Vernam had an absolute ‘mare, from start to finish. Walker – who *does do* this – spent about an hour solely intent on drawing fouls. (For me, he was an embarrassment but he’s not alone at the club for ‘falling easily’: and yes I am happy to call out the coaching staff on this. Of course they are seeing #PremierLeagueLegends do this on a daily basis, but for me Artell and co should be discouraging it not using it as a strategic tool).

But on. To a second half where the Mariners found themselves and a good dollop of their game, equalising before probing for the winner that they may have deserved. As he often does, Artell made smart, timely substitutions and had obviously *had words|* about the lack of courage and composure in the first period. Burns, who for the first time in my limited experience looked a threat, scored a fine goal and would have notched a decisive second but for a remarkable save for Tranmere’s superannuated keeper. It was ‘all Town’ until, disastrously, the defence switched-off and allowed the visitors to *absolutely steal it* in the 96th minute. Horror show!

I had a brother and plenty mates there. They will have felt distraught at that cruel denouement but also at the capitulation in the first half. Town stopped doing it the Town Way. Good players stopped being brave enough to show and to pass to feet. It’s happened a zillion times, at a million clubs. But bloody tough to see that at your own.

Radio Humberside Interview: The Dots Will Not Be Joined.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I was born and brought up in Grimsby and the surrounding area. Sport at home, with mates, in the local schools and amateur leagues played a massive role in making me who I am: learning to value folks through football/cricket/whatever.

I try to explain this, here – but hey, am not gonna disguise the fact that this a good old-fashioned sales-pitch for the new book. Along the way, there is the odd… yaknow, *insight*.

Go to 3 hrs 20: long show!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09y4ck8