Dubbin

I remember getting my first pair of football boots. I was ten or eleven and had just come out of hospital and thus my football career began; badly, though I didn’t know it then. Instead, I was consumed with excitement like a medieval knight preparing for battle. Admittedly no armour or horse, not even a sword, but a brand new pair of leather football boots and a round tin of Dubbin. 

Heraldry would be added at school in the form of white shorts and a heavy but brightly coloured football shirt. But first the squirearchal duties — dubbin the boots and leaving them to soak overnight. In the morning, supervised by my dad, I would buff them until they shone. That was the theory. 

The following day, battle commenced on a damp and freezing field. The team captain knew my worth, or lack of it, putting me in defence for want of a better alternative. I hopped on the spot, tense with excitement. A whistle blew, and we were off. What happened next is a half-forgotten blur: balls were passed to me, and I kicked spiritedly at air as the ball sailed past. Sometimes I made contact but ending up passing it to the opposing side. I ran all over the place, up and down the pitch, sideways and back, nowhere in sight of a ball, but with the smartest pair of boots on the field. Eventually they put me in goal. An equally poor decision. And so ended my footballing career.

I was reminded of all this when, many years later, our son played his first football match for the school. He looked splendid in his gold-coloured shirt and white shorts, his shiny new boots I wanted to put dubbin on (withdrawal symptoms) but couldn’t. The boots were modern plastic or something. The pitch was freezing, noses running in cold, shouts of support and encouragement lost in a blistering wind.

Being more intelligent than me, our eleven-year-old son had an uncanny knack of knowing where the ball would be at any one moment (I think it’s called ‘reading the ball’) and so would be there waiting for it when it came. Cheers erupted—pleas—orders barked all of which our son ignored as he watched, with mild interest, the ball rolling by his feet. He’d ‘read the ball.’ What more did they want? I felt very proud of him. What could he not have done had there been dubbin on his boots?