Bully chastened by the mysterious bunker collapse sought redemption in the construction of a football pitch that when finished, would “be better than Wembley.”
His army of ants descended on a plot of waste ground armed with a few tools and an old push mower pinched from a shed on a posh estate.
Little progress was made.
The antique proved no match for triffid weeds, so the thieves were ordered to pinch a scythe.
In the 1970s, Britain was still building Council housing. Good news for those who needed a decent home at a fair rent and our Wembley.
All tools and materials for our theatre of dreams were on the Council’s construction site. All that stood between us and them were square-shaped security guards with flat hats, big boots, and Alsatians in need of anger management.
Under the blazing splendour of the moon, furtive shadows descended.
Only minor injuries were sustained. A vigilant Alsatian bit Chip Soper on the arse and Carrot Evenson snagged his foreskin on the perimeter fence, a price worth paying for the haul of wood, nails, hand tools, and fresh turf, relayed for a 3 pm kick-off.
Pilfered tins of white emulsion marked the pitch, offcuts became goalposts, and an oversized scaffolding net, finished the job.
Having our own pitch meant we no longer played matches in the street, dodging dogs, bog seat mopeds, or using hedges as goals, a relocation welcomed by those who regularly had their front windows put through by an over-ambitious and misdirected volley.
Breen the Kilt was press-ganged into playing in the inaugural match by his missus ‘Little Aggie,’ a fiery Glaswegian, who wanted him “oot frarm under ma feet.”
Little Aggie despite her stunted growth, “four feet nutten in her torn tights,” would “Take the face of yous as quick as look at her,” according to my mother who knew of such things.
After his shift at the dog meat factory, Aggie made Breen strip to his underpants to wash in the backyard, come rain or shine, sleet, or snow.
“Ye ain camin in ma hoose stinkin a shite.”
Breen examined our Wembley, “them gools loook just lie the ones at Hampden when King Kenny put one through Clemence’s legs.”
SCOTLAND 2 ENGLAND 1, 1976 Home International Championship – Hampden Park Glasgow – 15th May 1976 Kenny Dalglish aims a tame shot at Ray Clemence. The ball slips through Clemence’s hands, through his legs and into the net. Dalglish wheels away in celebration as a stunned Mick Mills and Roy McFarland look on.
Someone shouted, “Bald Scottish Cunt,” as Bully landed a well-aimed sod on Breen’s Ralph Coates combover.
It was as if the entire street wanted to play in the big match.
Pete Hamlett squeezed his old school goalkeeper’s jersey over a beer gut and solved the selection conundrum.
“I want twenty-two players on this pitch in five minutes, the rest are goin in the fuckin brook.”
The teams consisted mostly of adults and a few talented older youths.
Phil was one.
Pete outlined a few rules. There was no ref or offside, if you could walk after a tackle then no foul had occurred. Each team was allowed two subs, this was flexible depending on deaths and acts of God
A lack of proper kit meant it was impossible to distinguish teammates from mortal enemies, an impediment that led to confusion and friendly fire bloodshed.
Pete had a solution, one team, not his, would play the rest of the game bare-chested. Any player who refused to join ‘the skins,’ was “a mard arse,” “who didn’t deserve a place on the team.”
Football boots were optional, Mick Hope took to the field in his socks, no match for sharpened studs or steel toe caps.
At halftime, scores were level, one each. Phil’s scorching free-kick, cancelling out Breen the Kilt’s header.
Following the consumption of cheap, powerful, bottled cider, and the patching up of the walking wounded, the match resumed.
Both teams wanted to avoid extra time as this meant missing Big Daddy v Giant Haystacks on World of Sport.
The skins won a corner.
Breen’s movement to the near post was decisively halted by what a spectator later described as an act of grievous bodily harm, inflicted by a skin-headed steel toe-capped fullback.
Little Aggie, incensed by the assault, took the place of her bloody semi-conscious husband spitting teeth on the touchline.
Pete had consumed a litre bottle, his play becoming unsteadily more aggressive and uncoordinated. Nonetheless, as the game approached full time, he launched a long punt up field that landed at the tiny feet of an undiscovered football goddess.
Aggie dribbled past skinhead, elbowing him in the nose on the way to thumping the ball into the bottom corner of the scaffolding net, her emulsion coated plimsole following.
The game ended in that never to be bettered moment.
That evening to celebrate, the landlord of the Ashbank, never one to miss an opportunity, put on a bit of a do. A spread of chip butties, greasy sausages and Moby’s disco, fresh from a weekly booking at the divorced and separated night that my mother called “the knocking shop.”
Kilted Breen a spot of head wound blood dripping into his pint, gazes lovingly through concussed eyes as ‘Little Aggie,’ now ten-foot-tall, is cheered to the rafters.
The next morning a rampant hoard of council workers invaded the pitch and ‘Our Wembley,’ was no more.
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