Friday, December 30, 2011

Some memories from 2011.

Yesterday, appropriately enough, I read Julian Barnes’ “The sense of an ending”. Among many things it deals with is the diluting of memory.

One character quotes Patrick Lagrange when explaining history “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation”

Sport it can be argued is the counterpoint to this, though not perhaps the inadequacies of documentation bit. We all remember down to the smallest of details where we were when the most seismic of sporting shifts occurred. A moment shared by millions reduces itself into the most personal of experiences and as 2011 ticks over to the sporting monolith that will be 2012, here’s a few that crossed my mind.

To those of a red persuasion each time you wonder up the great citadel of Old Trafford melts into one memory. A great throng inches its way up past the swag sellers and sadly now, more and more walk past the fanzine sellers who bellow out their names. I’m proud of my own contribution to one such fanzine however small and it is one match day experience that should be treasured and protected.

Last February during the derby day the nerves that beset me were such that if the statue of Sir Matt Busby was a lot lower I may have planted a kiss at his feet a la Oliver Reed in Gladiator. Bring me fortune indeed.

I spent the next hour or so in a perpetual state of nervousness not helped by Wayne Rooney’s ineptitude. I was pestering a friend of mine to the right that he had to come off. His touch was wayward, his passing was abysmal and I failed to see what he was offering the game. Then it happened.

There is a millisecond after something extraordinary happens in a stadium where everyone confirms it did just happen before the carnage ensues. To be in line with Rooney that day as he arched his body back and hung in the air was to be blessed. To see the ball slam emphatically into the net as it did and to share in the collective ecstasy that followed was to know you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment. Unless you wore blue and were stationed to my top left. Apparently they gained some measure of revenge lately but alas, my short term memory is imperfect.


I think I have successfully managed to tell everyone I know or everyone I have ever had any communication with that during the summer I covered my first and so far only match as a football writer. Forgive me but starting out at Manchester United v FC Barcelona at FedEx field in Washington was a little thrilling.

I dressed up and stayed quiet the first day as Sir Alex and Patrice Evra took questions. I leaned in a bit too much as Paddy Crerand and James Cooper from Sky Sports were discussing transfers though. Xavi Hernandez shook my hand as he left their press conference. It was an honour despite him torturing me at Wembley in May. Dimitar Berbatov raised a hand in an apology when a stray shot nearly took my head off in training. I wish it hit me.

Gary Neville told me to sod off when I asked him for five minutes of his time while I was ringside as Fergie and his hairdryer launched a seek and destroy missile at a Daily Mail scribe. It was nice to see at half-time too that I can take a better penalty than Kobe Byrant.


The day after the match I sat in the impressive surroundings of Nationals Park to watch the home team beat the Mets. It is easy to see why some of the best sports writing is about baseball; there is a slow brooding intimacy to the sport. Jason Werth was having a hard time during the game and during the season and wasn’t being helped by one spectator in front of him. He didn’t convey the look of a man ignoring the heckler well and when he reflexively plucked one ball out of the air in the fifth inning he marched towards the bullpen and the spectator and had eyes only for him. The heckler averted his elsewhere.


A misty night in November under the floodlights at Thomand Park will forever leave its mark too. The terrace moved as one that day as Munster churned through those forty phases. It was like watching a horror movie at times as some watched through their fingers fearful of the seemingly inevitable knock on that would end the game. When the ball was finally worked to O’Gara he still had it all to do but that red man writes his own script and Thomand yelled as one when the ball split the posts.

That’s just a few memories, most definitely imperfect and doubtlessly inadequately documented but its how I remember them anyway. 2012 will have to go some to dilute them.

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