Tugs in My Heartstrings
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| How would you like your nose pressed to these? Photo by Jhaye-Q |
IT"S REAL MADRID vs CSKA Moskow and there's a free kick up!
Camera angle from behind the defensive wall in front of goal and, lo and behold, there is a player lying on the ground facing a grove of delectable calves clad in crimson and primary blue knee-socks.
Wha ...?
The kick is taken! The wall leaps like low-scoring synchronised swimmers. My heart is in my throat, as the player on the grass seems to be in sincere peril for a heartbeat, two, three. Cleats do leave a nasty mark; I expect especially to faces.
But he's SAFE! And thankfully emerges from amid the fearsome feet intact.
"What was he doing down there?" I ask the BBF (who knows EVERYTHING about football).
"That's in case the ball goes under the wall. That happens."
"They always used to do that?" I ask.
"Fairly recently. Balls kept going under the wall."
"I see. I wonder how they decide who gets the duty of being the lie-down-behind-the-wall guy?"
Some people think football is a matter of life and deat, I assure you, it's much more important than that." - Bill Shankley
I get a vivid mental image of the change-room pre-match: the strikers exempt of course, the manager solemnly traversing the room with his hand extended to each player in turn. One by one they gape dramatically up and deeply into his eyes, before slowly reaching out a hand, lips dripping prayers. Then an immense sigh, a fold over onto the small object crushed by the relieved clutch-up of hand into fist..
Until at last, the unlucky sot who reaches out and draws ... the short straw.
This man's prayers change from ones for luck of the draw to ones for preservation, knowing that the first time his team concedes a free kick, his cheek will touch the sod; his eyes will behold his brethren from an unimagined (or maybe imagined) angle; he will face danger untold.
Yes. Because he is the lie-down-behind-the-wall guy. Cursed fate!
