Scenes from a footy game (a girl in need of a torniquet)

So I won't probably bore you with the sad and depressing demise of the Devils - if it was a break up today it certainly wasn't the romantic embrace as a couple are seperated by war or terminal illness, but rather, the kind of break up when you turn to a girl and say "Do you want to go out again" and she says "Nup". I was really upset that they didn't do a farewell lap though - I was hoping for some free merch handed over the fence as well. However, I would like to give out a big shout out to the girl in the Merc Kick final, Janelle - I didn't catch the school she was representing in the long kicking competition, or the colour of her armband, but I must admit, I have had a thing for girls who can kick a football - I think when I was growing up in Penguin, it was in the dying days of those kind of comedy events where you would get girls playing football in the mud in short shorts and tight tops and they'd throw the male referee in the mud at the end and everyone would say "cor" and call the girls darling and there would be a couple of seriously butch girls at either end that everyone would compare to whoever the fattest footballer of the day was...but there was one girl, at the only time I attended one of these hilarious events (and really, they were knee slapping comedy, the number one way I learned a number of offensive terms for breasts), who was sensational, really attractive, and could kick a football 60m, and she stayed in my head to this day, because she was so confident, refusing to be stereotyped and standing up for herself. It's hard to quantify peoples confidence - I myself am only confident as a front - but this was the real deal, without an ego. She just stood out, and I never found out her name, but I know that the only other time I saw her in my life, she was in the pub, downtrodden and awkward while her boyfriend was having this massive go at her in front of everyone. I didn't know what had happened in the intervening years, but it's probably one of the few people I've genuinely wanted to save. Or at least, recruit her for Collingwood, she had better footskills than Shane O'Bree...

So while I don't make the same assumptions that the 39m kicking ability of Janelle equates to any kind of self confident expression, she was at least out there having a bash. My own life currently amounts to little dreams and goals, rather than a particular big ambition, and my own self confidence has always been in question. My current ambition forged today is now to join the local football committee of Kermandie, my local football team (who uniquely come from a place that apparently doesn't exist) and do it within two years. My best friend kinda sorta bigs up her involvement at Penguin football club a little, at one point claiming she picked the side, but she does at least know a lot about politics within a local football club. She told me today that the big social circle to crack into at a local football club is the little circle that prepares the lunches. She said that the major issue she saw at Penguin was that everyone would battle for the job of mashing the potatoes. The reason for this was that the main potato masher was the presidents wife, who would spend her time with her fellow mashees discussing all of the problems within the town, never mind the football club, and she had the power to make or break the career of a would be footy club socialite. This has greatly worried me because my own cooking career isn't the stuff of Ramsay - never mind mashing potatoes, at home economics once, me and my mate forgot to turn the oven on when we tried to bake scones, and then had to try and pass off the resulting mess as some kind of doughy soup. It failed miserably. And you should have seen my attempts to make happy pants. Actually, in home economics, my happy pants remained distinctly unmade - we spent most of our time playing that game where you tell someone a coin is stuck to their head and make them smack it off...and bagging out 1927 I think. If I have to crack a circle in which I have to mash some spuds, I think I could be in trouble. But at least, it's an ambition...

I don't know if I have to take today as a sign that I have to save myself before I can save other people, if that makes sense, but that I perhaps have to take a greater interest in my own post 30 life. I've felt quite dislocated for quite some time, as if perhaps if I stepped up and showed ambition I'd only fail and retreat. I'm not sure where this dislocation has come from, but when I was out in the middle of Bellerive today, I did think of the old days in Penguin when I was lot more open minded and happy and would quite often hold up football games by wandering around the goal square long after the second siren. However, I do feel very positive about my life right now, dispite the dislocation - in fact, there's no way I would want to be 16 again. I was queuing for a Time Out bar today when I saw a girl of medium build in a black and white furry jacket, black jeans, try hard boots, about 16, who was telling her girlfriend about this boy she liked - she said she'd pretty much tried everything to get him to like her - she'd sent him a message on Facebook, she'd sent him a text, she'd even gone round to his house and offered to, well, let's say when a mummy and daddy love each other very much...she munched thoughtfully on her lukewarm saveloy, annoying the large woman in the pink shirt behind the counter because she was holding up the queue, stared into the cold middle distance and put her hands on her hips. Her friend, a glamazon in giant sunglasses, simply shook her head and looked her friend dead in the eyes (I presume, she was wearing sunglasses, and my attention was distracted by Garbage on the IPOD). "You," she said, mustering every single dreg of humanity and empathy from the pit of her Jetty Surf bought soul, "simply have to root his brains out until he comes around." When I grow up, I'll turn the tables indeed...

Of course, the composition of thoughts running through my brain today (and typed here with little pausing) couldn't distract from a miserable day on the field. Players were going through the motions, standing around, waiting for the end. It was cold, it was final, it was the day after the break up already. I did at least get some sense of finality from my team playing their last game, even without the lap of honour - I remember when I left my soccer team, St Mirren, behind, in 1992, when we moved back to Burnie from Scotland. They had been a massive part of my weekly ritual in Scotland, and then, suddenly, they were gone, as swiftly and silently as the day Kenickie stopped making albums. They didn't go out of business, but it was a depressing day, they were relegated, and every step, every minute of the last game we went to, I felt like something significant was ending. We stood sadly at Paisley Gilmour St station, saying goodbye to the neds and the petty criminals, the loose women and the slightly drunk at 11 in the morning "jakies" - it was a touching and significant farewell. Of course, we lost, 1-0 to Dundee United. We took a look around the ground as it emptied, me and my Dad, while behind me, a Dundee United fan with a son of his own, a son my age, was also taking a look around, and offered me a unique farewell to fours years of ups and downs supporting my Saints - he piped up in addressing his son with "St Mirren? Worst fucking team at the worst fucking ground with the worst fucking pies, the worst fucking juice, the worst fucking strip and the worst fucking grass - thank fuck I'll no be fucking back!" - I don't think the collected works of Antonella Gambotto could provide greater insight into humanity, nor could I be provided with a better send off.

Farewell Devils, goodbye troubled lustful teens, goodbye Janelle, goodbye kid who was doing impressions of the final siren to entertain his friends and goodbye local community football...I'll see you again someday...