There’s a story too good not to share, so bear with me whilst I
remember, and please be patient whilst I tell it:
Gringo was a good lad, see. Wet behind those smacking, snared ears,
and sometimes on another planet
But for a kid he got respect pretty quickly on the field; our job in
training was to kick him about a bit and knock him into the men’s
game
And from that first session it was clear that a) you couldn’t
really get near him unless you and a mate trapped him, in which case
B) He’d lay it off to whoever was dashing to fill the space you’d
left. His fullback quickly learned the score
And zoomied it whenever it looked like Gringo was about to feint and
twist and rip their opponents a new hole
We all thought, knew, suspected it when at 16 he not only meggied
Slasher and left him snarling like Gnasher, on his arse and muddy
And whilst the rest of us drew our breath in and looked at each other
like, uh-oh, Slasher got back
up and with a face like thunder
Launched himself into a waist-high,
studs-up, exocet missile of an assault which he’d been trying so
hard to cut out of his game
But he was so wound up at getting
skinned he intended to really, really hurt Gringo, break his legs,
show him what it really meant
Well, Slasher learned the other
reason Gringo was so special, because the centre-half found himself
somehow in another mess
With the lad chortling to himself as
he swerved and sashayed and floated toward goal where he rainbow
flicked it into the net
Meanwhile, Slash’s ariel
adventures had to come down somewhere and it so happened that he
actually took Jacko out instead
And Jacko, being Jacko, got up and
stood over Slasher, being the only one the mad cunt ever gave a
modicum of respect
The boss blew his whistle and drew
Gringo near to him. Bloody hell lad, you’re gonna get
obliterated if you do that in a match
And Gringo shrugged and winked at
Slasher, whose face had gone shades of red and purple, steam from his
ears, the whole lot
But he didn’t do it again, not to
Slash. Gringo wasn’t that daft. Instead, he dropped into a deep no.
10 position
And started spraying it about like
prime-era Jan Molby, except nowhere near as fat, but bloody hellfire
the boy had vision
And over the weeks that followed he
grew into himself, and transformed from a wan and sickly-looking
transparent-skinned little boy
Into a young man with a four-pack,
cause there wasn’t enough of him to grow six, and somehow he
avoided
Slash and Jacko and even Gummy, like
Jacko an ex-pro at a good level in his time; in fact they came to
respect the talent
And the way the boy, at corners,
somehow was no longer a scrawny little powderpuff, but seemed
entirely made of sharp edges
He was five foot four on a good day,
and his mam had to take in his shirts and shorts so he could wear
them at all
The lad, Gringo, like I say, didn’t
talk much and soon as he had the opportunity would put them
headphones on and nod away in the corner
Listening to whatever weirdo K-pop
Jap-crap it was he had on that day, and you’d not get a peep out of
him except a soft ‘goodbye lads’
Look, we knew he was special; we
knew he was a player; we were really trying to do the eternal thing
and toughen him up
You know, he was like part of the
squad most of the rest of that season, though he didn’t get a
minute on the pitch
We were embroiled – embroiled! -
in a relegation battle, which is how the Chronicle
liked to phrase it
And frankly we needed the Dogs of
War right then, not a wunderkind will-o-the-wisp winger. His was a
future talent, that was the reason,
And it was our job to make sure that
future was secured. As it turned out, we stayed up on the penultimate
game of the season
Tuesday under the lights, home to
Colliers, a bunch of divot-making clodhoppers whose schtick was as
old as the game itself, a mid-table bunch of bores
With Black Country grit and thunder
and a trail of injuries and red cards left in their wake. They made
us look like Hungary ‘54
Though rather than stroke it about,
we had a gameplan of our own, and I have to admit most of it had
nothing to do with the actual ball
But involved who to take out the
game, and when, to leave the gap for the overlap, and the cross to
the far post where Jacko always scored
So 1-0 at full time, and the ref
blew up wearily, with some of the boys swearing they saw relief in
his eyes that the game was over
Not that the fans cared. Two hundred
of them, all on the pitch, celebrating a World Cup Win rather than
staying in the Northern Premier
And we could hear them still as we
went and showered, and trudged to the little bar under the rickety
stand where there was a load of bread
And chips, and we ravenously scarfed
em down, having earned them with a rare enough victory, then let the
fans into the place
Oh what a night that was. The Boss
told us he needed us on Friday for the last game, cause he was
already thinking about the rebuild
And we all said, of course
gaffer, as he zoomed off in his
MX-5, thinking himself the flash cunt whilst we stood there taking
the piss
Cause it’s only a Mazda at the end
of the day innit? Anyway, he gave the lad a lift that day after the
game, taking him home
Lest the grizzled oldies taught him
bad habits like drinking and having fun and how to tell a groupie
from a painted-up bitch journo.
The WhatsApp was lively that week, all the boys checking in from wherever they ended up. There were sore
heads around
And there were sore cocks from
others who’d unwisely found themselves in a tart’s bed or near
the bins at the back of Voudou Lounge
I
don’t know how we got on it, but someone mentioned Gringo – who
wasn’t in the chat, and never had been – and how we’d sort him
some hole
After
the Bangor match coming up, Friday night on the bus, long weekend at
that, so we vowed to put in a fiver each for a brass on the way home
All
week we got more and more excited, not only cause by that stage there
were scouts coming to watch us in training too
Though
after the Tuesday had mauled us about, we had Thursday off to bathe
and coax scrappy old muscles to have one last go
It
was a piss-up with a game attached, don’t get me wrong, but at the
same time we all had enough about us to want to win it
Or
at least to put up a good account of ourselves, and Jacko had a word
with The Boss who promised Gringo’d get some minutes
Just
really so we could say he’d proper played for us before he went off
and dazzled way out of our orbit
You
do get them now and again, these kids. They’re fearless, though to
see em in the street you wouldn’t peg em for a player for one
minute
So
it was agreed, so we were proper buzzing as we made our way to the
pick-up point near our theatre of dreams, Rockport Road,
A
proper old-fashioned ground it was, all old tarmac and mismatched
stands, and bits missing from ancient sponsors’ boards
And
all of us piled on, and The Boss checked our names off of the list,
but nobody had seen Gringo and time was ticking
And
he wasn’t answering his phone. He was never late, see, so Degsie –
back seat sloucher if ever there was one
Started
a book on what minute it’d be when he turned up, with ‘never’
being one of the options too, and at 5-1 a few took them odds
Ten,
twenty minutes passed. Degsie opened a surreptitious lager whilst The
Boss stood outside, looking up and down the road
Then
at his watch, then at his phone, then at the coach driver as if to
say Help me out
here mate, I don’t know what to do here
The
coach driver didn’t say owt. He knew better, having been with us
all season, and having seen The Boss lay the fuck into whoever was
near
Anyway
it was right at the last minute that the engine started and The Boss
got on the coach, looking a bit down in the dumps
Cause
underneath it all he’d been wanting to unleash this lad and set him
loose amongst the dolts and never-weres of our fellow clubs
So
off we went, Gringo-less and a bit sad for it, cause we were looking
forward to inducting him properly into the game
Just
a little bit of fun, like we all had when we started, before we got
dragged down into the gritty shit and struggle and pain
We
dribbled down the A55, a car-park at 6pm on a Friday, and Degsie
passed around a few 500ml bottles of his special blend
Of
coca-cola and vodka, which looked like the Real Thing enough so
nobody’d question it. Usually we’d wait to the end
Of
the game to get stuck in, but fuck it – we’d stayed up and some
of the lads were clearly gonna be on their way come the close season
Which
was par for the course really. They’d get other clubs. We’d get
other clubs. It didn’t seem to be down to any particular reason
Aside
from the directors demanding, and the managers giving them, new faces
to shout at. Sometimes – no rhyme or reason – it’d work
You’d
hit upon a great blend of young uns, oldies, fighters, flair players,
water carriers, nifty passers, headcases, and suddenly couldn’t
lose
It
didn’t seem a coincidence to me that a lot of those times featured
awaydays and nights out together to galvanize the lads
So
we didn’t feel too bad about having a jar on the way down. The
Bangor lot had their share of pissheads, and that’s a fact
Well,
there were roadworks, and we pulled into Farrar Road at about 7.15pm,
weaving our way through the queues, down that alley
That
dark, dingy walkway, about as wide as the bus, but anyone who ever
played there knew what it felt like to see the floodlights blaze away
No
matter how old you were, wherever you’d been, this was how footy
felt, smelled, grew and got right in your face
Where
you could get a thousand in the crowd and it felt like they were
right on your shoulder, too. It was just that kind of place
It
was a real football ground, and that’s rarer than you’d think. We
hopped off the bus, most half-cut, rushed into the players’
entrance
Sometimes
you’d wonder why you still bothered with all this non-league
palaver, where you had to earn everything including respect
But
there, it made sense. The Boss didn’t have to do a speech – there
was no time anyway – and one to eleven
Ran
out to jeers and shouts and threats that made the hairs on your balls
stand up; it felt like you were in the Coliseum
A
desultory warm-up, a few crosses hoofed in for Lev to catch or punch
away, like he never did once the action started,
A
few last clenched fists and exhortations to each other to get stuck
the fuck in; Slasher won the toss, which he never usually did
Then
the ref blew his whistle – Bangor had only put ten players on the
pitch, the silly bastards, so he counted again and had a word with
their gaffer
Who
said something and disappeared quickly down the tunnel, whilst we all
stood around looking a bit gormless at each other
Then
five minutes later he reappeared, followed by a player who’d
clearly just got changed, kept stopping to do up laces
Or
straighten his shorts, or whatever. And we all noticed at the same
time that it was Gringo himself – you couldn’t miss his face
Well,
we were confused, not least The Boss. He was halfway between
apopleptic and devastated, tears of rage and genuine sadness
Cause
he’d been trying to get the lad on a long contract for ages, but
the board wouldn’t have it, and he’d never actually registered
for us.
Well,
it was predictable. They absolutely rattled us 5-1, our goal coming
in the last minute from a pretty dodgy penalty
Given
by the ref to attempt to calm us down whilst Gringo cut through us
again and again. He scored a hat-trick that evening
And
we couldn’t get near the cunt. He was quicksilver, magical, an
international, generational talent
And
though we tried to kick the fuck outa him, nobody could lay a stud
anywhere near where he was – he was that good in a way you dreamed
about
The
Boss was yelling at us to hack the fucking traitor down; we tried,
but he was operating in another galaxy.
When
we got off the pitch at full-time, knackered, half-pissed, covered in
mud, blaming the referee
We
knew what we’d witnessed from Gringo was the start of a special
career. And when the time came to get on the bus
He
was there with the gaffer, seemingly having made friends again,
sitting there like a schoolboy at the front
We
got stuck the fuck into the coke and vodka, couple of crates had
appeared too, and despite the shitty result morale was high
Cause
we’d done it again: nine months at the coalface. It was a game of
stamina, really. Only the most bloody-minded survived
So
we pulled up on the hard shoulder near to Flint – Jacko’s ancient
bladder mostly the culprit on this particular occasion
And
we all lined up to piss there, like sixteen of us, with cars zooming
past, cheering as they clocked our al fresco wazzing
So
some of us turned round and waved our cocks at the traffic, and
Slasher turned around and did the old Goatse too
Then
somehow Degsie stumbled and zig-zagged into the road, cars swerving
to avoid him, the pissed-up fucking fool
But
he was convinced he was immortal, so he carried on his dance into the
fast lane, and over the barriers
Where
he turned around, thumbs up, and moonwalked back to the fucking bus
like nothing was untoward
And
we all piled back on again, properly jarred this time, a bit rowdy,
but just a gang of lads letting off steam,
Which
is why we didn’t notice Gringo hadn’t got back on, until we saw
The Boss absolutely raging, his language quite obscene
Because
not only were our two lanes stopped cause of Degsie’s little jaunt,
but all the way across the other two lanes
Lorries
were beeping like fuck, swerving to avoid a little fucker wearing
headphones, oblivious and jinking on his way
And
we watched as he pirhouetted, balletic on the tarmac of the motorway,
cars screeching to a halt
Before
a petrol truck’s horn sounded, like a ferry-boat’s warning, but
too late; the driver, distracted, and too fast,
Clipped
a Ford Mondeo just back from a liaison in a Chester hotel, went
airborne, and crashed down, crunched and chopped,
We
watched, aghast, as the truck slid and skipped and shed its load,
glooping oil all over the shop
And
Gringo was still dancing as the cab hit him, knocking him fifty feet
into the sky. Then in slow-motion he fell
And
at the same time the petrol started to catch, and fire started to
burn, and we all hunkered down under the seats, fucking hell
I
swear to whichever God there is, or gods, or anything you care to put
in front of me, that in that haze of twisted metal and filthy fire
I
saw Gringo float up to heaven, arms out, smiling benevolently; then
we were driving to Bangor again, and the motorway was clear
Since
then, nobody speaks of Gringo, or if they do they insist they’d
never met him: it was all a put-on, a wind-up, a myth
To
make our team look good: a supposed secret genius to unleash in
another relegation skirmish,
And
you won’t get a word out of Jacko, or Slasher, or The Boss, and
you’ll get fuck all else from me
Cause
we beat the sheep-shaggers two nil, with a rare thirty yarder from
that drunken motorway-dancing reprobate Degsie
And
we’d never played with no Gringo wonderkid,
The
best player I’ve never seen.
No
evidence that he’d even existed
So
the story will die with me.
