A Brief Interlude

There is that second where time stands still.

Thirty to thirty thousand eyes on you, and will

you make sense

of the frantic scurry of arms and legs?

To shout GOAL inside yourself!

To change the course of events and

make others believe.

After that nerve wired moment

when you ask yourself maybe?

Not unlike picking up cutlery for the first time, how we develop our strength and strengths is defined by our raw adventure. The swinging of a wooden mallet, in cold winter steam, on a sharp plastic playing surface where one would skid whilst remembering a fist-like ball of opaque Perspex. At first Josh's inaccuracy at field hockey training was complemented by an immense lack of physical fitness. He was a 20 year old young man who enjoyed trying out new activities whilst studying construction design.

The hockey ball would simply go around him. It would miss his stick by a half inch, or hit his trainers or another part of his body which would be classed as a foul. Week after week, game by game and demoralizing 7-0 defeat, prior to chilling dressing room shower, the saga continued.

At one training session, Josh was practicing hitting a twenty pence piece on the all weather pitch. With shaved grey hair, a short shaven beard and a warm smile, Peter West the coach had a look at Josh's hockey stick and said that he should go on the internet and buy a new one. So Josh did exactly that. Jacob and George, Josh's friends from school, were also very keen hockey players and Jacob went on to play at the highest level.

A squalid day, mid-November, and the floodlights illuminated the smooth shiny surface of the mirroring jet-black goal frames. It was Josh's first game for the reserve side, and sheer nerves were playing self belief.

'We'll bring you on, left of midfield, after half time', explained the coach during the pre-match warm up.

The two sides faced each other, with 11 rigid and imposing figures on either side, to follow a procedure they well knew for two more intensive 35 minute halves of hockey. The whistle blew.

The other side was strong, and fast with a five man French barricade to make the goal appear blockaded and half the pitch that they defended 50% longer from the central push back line. Josh's side was fighting a losing battle, whilst he was watching from the side lines. The score was 2-0 at half time to the opposition.

Josh came on at half time, and didn't know where to put himself despite being allocated a position and zonal area to occupy. The left back, Rick Broomstone, spent the first ten minutes of Josh's debut simply barking orders at the young midfielder.

'Josh where are you!'shouts Broomstone 'Where are you standing!! Oh don't let them scoorrrreeee!!!'

Panicked, and totally displaced, Josh was constantly screaming, 'I'm there now!', 'Yeah I've got him!' and 'Sorry Rick!' The game continued.

There is a lot of luck involved in sport. Josh's side pulled it back to 2 goals for each team, and 10 minutes of the match remained with both sides tired to dizziness from sheer exhaustion. When you read the next few lines, please try and picture this scene actually happening, and remember that some people believe that truth is actually stranger than fiction.

The ball is picked up by George, who was a tall bulky centre forward, and the ball is dragged back across his body. The ball is under control, and there is just enough time to enable a brief look around the pitch, to make a decision. You may recall the story of Longstone, and his inspiration on that dreary day with Josh, at the construction site. It was the same thing, believe it not, that entered Josh on that dark day when the white shirts were drenched and pasted to cold, and raw, numbness. He ran.

Josh sprinted 50 yards into the scoring area. The ball was hurled high, into the late evening sky, at a 30 yard height arched trajectory. Whilst Josh was travelling, the ball seemed to be somehow suspended in the air. It might have seemed like a whole minute, whilst the passage of play from the ball leaving the forwards stick to it reaching the score zone, would have been 3 or 4 seconds at most.

'Come on Joshua Smith!' shouts Peter West.

The ball thuds against the soft surface, just outside the 'D', and bounces prior to entering it. After the first bounce, the ball was head height with Josh and right of his body. The goalkeeper was like a large, black and orange machine with robotic arms and legs and a futuristic helmet. From inside the goal mouth the goalkeeper storms out, whilst Josh has eyes fixed on the small white ball. There are also three defenders in front of the keeper, whose sticks are waving around trying to prize the ball from Josh's reach, on an ambush to slam the ball against the wire mesh fencing that surrounded the pitch. The ball bounces a second time.

Maybe we create luck, so does that make it lucky in the first place? Josh wanted to make whatever contact with the ball he could, so with his reverse open stick, he used the pace it was travelling and nudged the ball between the goalkeepers' leg protecting pads and stick. His run continued, so that he himself was the other side of the keeper and could see the unguarded metal frame, backboard and netting. There were roughly 7 or 8 yards between Josh and the ball as he watched it bounce and trickle over the line, and onto the backboard, like a skimming stone across a clear crystal lake.