Ah yes, that most cruel of schoolboy popularity contests, the team selection. I was always very grateful not to be the last to be chosen, but it was only just.Paul296 wrote:I try not to think about football too much. It gives me horrible flashbacks - even now I sometimes wake up screaming with the words 'Ahh do we have to have him Sir?' and ''andley yoo fat bastard' echoing round in my head.
Your place in the pecking order usually determined your position on the pitch, which demonstrated a serious misunderstanding of the fundamentals of tactics. The least athletic ended up keeping goal or in defence, while the self-styled Greek gods all vied to be strikers. Consequently, once they lost possession, and the opposition broke through the middling midfield, they cut through the unpopular defence like a hot knife through butter.
Of course, the opposition team were equally flawed, and their strikers weren't half as good as they'd like to believe; occasionally they'd screw up their chance of glory, slice a shot on goal and cop the ridicule from all quarters. More often though, the goalkeeper would wearily collect the ball from the back of the net to a barrage of groans and obscenities from the forwards.
I know this ritual intimately because I had a perfect view from my position of Left Back (as in 'left back to keep the goalkeeper company'). What I don't remember is any kind of coaching to enable the remedial duffers to improve their skills or any attempt to explain the rules of the game. I think society believes that if boys stand on a football pitch for long enough, they absorb the rules by osmosis. I certainly never knew about the offside rule and might well have used it profitably to trap the glory hunters. That would have been a laugh!