Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

I order a pint of Guinness and a packet of Marlboros and pull up a stool at the bar. When my beer arrives I immediately take a long and deep draught. Then I light up. That’s better. That’s more like it.

I turn around on my stool. A sports programme has started on the television: football. I pick up my beer and move over towards it. Nobody else budges.

A team in red shirts and white shorts is attacking the goal of a team in green. Rockport United versus Ballybrew: the highlights of today’s game.

I pick a comfortable chair and sit down to watch. To my surprise, I’m jittery as a fan. I thought that I had grown free from my absurd affinity for this club and the eleven random men who each Saturday, years ago, ran out as the clumsy agents of my dreams. But tonight, for some reason, something is at stake, some stubborn deposit of boyish hope is at risk.

It’s simple: if United avoid defeat, they stay up and Ballybrew are relegated; if Ballybrew win, they stay up and United go down.

Up on the screen, the players are running about in a soundless stadium. United have the ball. It’s with Thompson, the sweeper, in the centre circle and moving forward; he checks, pointing his arm like a visionary towards the opponents’ goal, indicating, perhaps, the long and incisive path that his pass will take, and in my imagination I hear the rumble of anticipation from the crowd; then he kicks it fifty yards back to his own keeper. Thompson’s not taking any chances.

Who can blame him? Safety first, that has to be the United motto for the day. Let Ballybrew make the running. They’re the ones who need the victory, not us. Besides, we don’t have an attack worthy of the description. The United tactic is to pump long balls into the danger zone in the hope that a rebound or lucky bounce will break for them. But no such thing happens this time. The United centre forward, Mulligan, a big, brave, unathletic number nine, hemmed in by green shirts like a man in a thicket, unsuccessfully attempts a jump, his heavy leap taking him barely two inches off the ground, and the ball drifts straight through to the Ballybrew keeper. He, in turn, volleys the ball as far as he can away from his own goal — right across the pitch, in fact, into the hands of the United keeper.

So the game continues, in an erratic sequence of broken, strenuous play. The teams are doing their best, but their best is not good enough; football is just too hard for them. Out of habit, I keep track of the referee. ‘Look at that,’ Pa would say if he were here. ‘Look at how he keeps to the diagonal.’ The diagonal: this is the referee’s beat, along an invisible line that runs across the field between one corner flag and another, a line from which the prudent arbiter should not stray. ‘That’s not as easy as it looks,’ Pa would say. ‘Although, of course, he has two linesmen to help him out. Boy, what I could do with two linesmen …’

Suddenly we’re in the second half and the players are poised on the halfway line for the restart, shaking their shining, lubricated thighs. Only forty-five minutes to go. Only forty-five minutes to hold out.

We cut portentously to a United throw-in on the right wing, a promising position, and I hope against hope: is it possible? Will this be a United goal? The long throw lands at the feet of Mulligan, his back to the goal at the edge of Ballybrew’s penalty area. Painfully he starts to turn, a slow, elbowing swivel which surely will fool nobody; but somehow, by a miracle of shins and knees, he holds on to the ball and, with a barge of his left shoulder, breaks free from the defenders and lumbers into a space …

Shoot! Shoot now!

Mulligan shoots, and the ball hits the crossbar and ricochets into the crowd. Unlucky! Good effort! The camera pans in for the reaction close-up and for a moment the screen is filled with the biblical spectacle of Tony Mulligan looking in anguish at the sky before he shakes himself, snots out of one nostril and runs off to take up his position. And suddenly the sound of the TV is switched on — the girl behind the bar is smiling at me and holding a remote control — and the commotion of the contest enters the bar with a boom, and from that moment rhythm arrives from its mysterious source to infuse and transform the United play, and now there is movement, now the leather sphere has been tamed and is switched fluidly from red shirt to red shirt as we run unerringly for one another, flicking and nodding and back-heeling the ball around like a beach ball, now the wind and rain are dismissed, the imprisoning touch-lines mere scenery. Shot after shot rains down on the Ballybrew end, time and again the ball is scrambled desperately off their line, but it doesn’t matter, it’s only a matter of time before the goal comes, and time is on our side; the longer the game goes on the more certain the draw, our victory, becomes; yes, every second is another coin in the bank. Surely, the commentator says hoarsely, shouting to be heard above the din of the fans, surely this cannot go on for much longer! Now there are only two minutes to go, one hundred and twenty seconds until we’re there. Here we go, here we go, here we go, our fans chant, here we go, here we go, here we go-oh. A cacophony of whistling sounds around the ground, urging the referee to blow for time, but there is one minute left, and somehow Ballybrew have been awarded a free kick thirty-five yards from the United goal, too far out, in this wind, for a direct shot at goal, the commentator says; but nevertheless United have formed a wall — better safe than sorry — and three players now stand arm-in-arm ten yards away from the kick, their hands over their balls, their faces pale and unflinching as a Ballybrew player lines up to shoot …

He shoots. The ball strikes a shoulder in the wall, loops into the air and floats bizarrely towards the goal so that the goalkeeper, who has moved a few yards off his line to narrow the angle, is forced to do a backwards flip in order to fingertip it over the bar for a corner …

The keeper crashes to the ground. The ball falls slowly and comes to a halt. It is beyond the United goal-line and between the posts. It is a goal. Ballybrew have scored.

But that’s impossible.

That’s — no, hold on a minute, that’s –

Foul, surely! Offside! No, no, that can’t be right! This cannot be happening!

Ref! Referee!

‘Quite remarkable scenes here at Redrock Park,’ the commentator bawls, ‘as a cruel deflection puts Ballybrew into the lead — quite against the run of play. But that’s football, and I make it that ninety minutes have gone and we’re now playing injury time.’

Injury time. There’s still a chance. It’s a funny old game; it’s not over till the fat lady sings.

‘And that’s it!’ the commentator exclaims, ‘that’s it! It’s all over!’

The victorious players are piled up in a huge ecstatic heap in the middle of the field, their joyous noises audible in the songless stadium.

We’ve been robbed. That’s all there is to it. We’ve been robbed.

I finish my drink. What does it matter anyway?

I put some money in the telephone on the bar and ring Angela’s.

The voice mail switches on. I’m not here at the moment, Angela says. Please leave a message.

She’s changed the message. The message used to say we’re not in at the moment. And my voice used to say it.

She’s scrubbed me out. She’s removed me from the record.

I stub out half a cigarette. I mustn’t get paranoid. There’s going to be an innocent explanation, I know there is.

I slip my coat on. I bet that by the time I get home she’ll be back, probably wallowing in a hot midnight bath, her breasts half immersed, her brown hair knotted up above her sleek white neck, her toes waiting for a soaping. In a very few minutes I could be doing just that, or maybe kneading her back as she lies face-down on the bed while she talks about her day — or maybe even having a bit more fun than that. Not a lot has been happening on that front for a while and we’re overdue some action.