Me 8: One Shot
"One shot", a line that runs through Michael Cimino's 'The Deer Hunter', that underlies Eminem's 'Lose Yourself'. One shot. Take it clean or it's gone.
I never had a shot, not like that. At least I don't think so. If I did, it came and went without my noticing, which is probably for the best.
So the concept of "One shot" can mean something different. It simply reminds us of a time where we nailed it, where we hit or struck one shot with such pure timing, such out-of-context perfection that, years or decades later, that one split second still lives on through the haze that surrounds it.
And we imagine Alan Partridge soundtracking it by saying "Shit, what a goal/shot/smash!"
I'm not quite talking about the "aristeia". In The Iliad, our common heroes have brief periods when they are at their very best, when they rise above themselves and destroy all before them. In modern parlance, there's "the zone", but the zone lasts longer, it's an area where top class sportspeople find themselves almost incapable of making a mistake. People like me never find the zone, but we can, if we're lucky, occasionally, have "one shot". One shocking crack, which shows us what we'd really be capable of if only we were capable of it ...
There was a goal. It was in the waning of my football abilities, after my first DVT, without great acceleration, with little spark left. My team, Atholl 1965, had been promoted but the promotion coincided unfortunately with a lot of our better players either having to give up or just falling away a bit. We had a horrible season in the top division, where all the joy went out of our game and we barely mustered a goal a game. An old rival, Primrose Hill, who we'd had many a close game with, were now a far better side than us so we entered our away fixture with trepidation and, as it started, we were overrun.
Still, our captain Chris managed to get to the byline on the right and looped over a deep cross. I hung back and it found its way, on the volley, to me just outside the area. And I caught it, on the full, with the outside of my left and it bent perfectly just inside the post. Just like that. Perfection. Probably the best goal I ever scored. Completely out of context. I was rubbish for the rest of the game, we lost 3-1. I was rubbish for the rest of the season. I'm not sure I ever scored another goal in a competitive fixture. Good one to end on, though. The most perfect strike of my life.
There was a shot, just in front of square on the up, which went to the boundary so fast and across the adjacent pitch, in a cricket match when I was 16. Didn't even feel it. There are shots in cricket where everyone, fielders, spectators, umpires, stops, almost shocked.
But my favourite, my one shot I'll never forget, that was with a racquet in hand, in a weird little sport, on a summer's day. It requires me to dig into my past as a teenage Christian, but I hope you'll forgive me. The version of teenage Christianity I was lucky enough to engage with was smart enough to know that for teenage boys, the best way to sell God and faith and fellowship was via near-relentless semi-competitive sport.
We went on these house parties, every Easter, every Summer, in some grand country school. The Easter one, we played hockey, a version of hockey where you could use both sides of the stick. That was organised, in a league format. Besides that, there was football, pool, table tennis, table football, every day.
The Summer House Party, down in Dorset, with great weather and huge fields, there was a bit of cricket, football, touch rugby, capture the flag, there was table tennis, pool, table football, there was, in a league format, an excellent cross between cricket and rounders called Podex, and there was Padder, basically short tennis. The Padder tournament was a huge knockout doubles tournament with everyone on the holiday (somewhere between 120 and 140) taking part.
There was a bit of time for other things besides sport, you know, god and what not, but not enough to get too irritating.
I think the sport was meant to teach us a lesson about good will and teamwork and good sportsmanship, about everyone getting a go, everyone making a contribution, about trying hard but not too hard, and all that shit was tough for me to take. I wanted to win and I wanted to be the star. If my dalliance with faith did one thing above all for me (and it did a lot) it was to gradually knock my level of self-absorbed competitiveness down to a just-about-acceptable level, but gradually and just-about-acceptable are the operative words.
From starting at the house parties when I was 13, I went through year after year of the joy of just playing sport mixed with frustration at a) not winning all the time and b) being mocked for wanting to win all the time, both in the casual games and the organised competitions. After almost winning the padder doubles in the first year (they put the youngest with the oldest) I went through years of not getting close, and I was convinced I was deliberately being put with duff partners, or in slightly duff teams, to teach me a gentle lesson in humility.
That might seem like paranoia, but actually it might well not have been. By the time I got to the summer at the end of my last school year, I was in charge, or rather the primary sidekick, and my friend Stephen and I were charged, amongst many things, with organising the sporting competitions, which meant rigorously and carefully picking out partnerships and teams, trying to create good match-ups and be generally fair. We tried to avoid putting two sporting superstars together and tried not to make any Podex team too strong.
Well, to an extent. I took advantage of my position to at least give myself a chance. I put together a nice, solid, podex team for myself (not ridiculously rigged, you understand) and then, perhaps feeling a little guilty, chose a fairly average young padder team mate. Decent, but not great.
Well, we lost our first round match, and we were out of the tournament, but that's when fate intervened. One of the better young player's allotted partner couldn't come, so he needed a fitting replacement - as the right age, and out of the tournament already, I was ideal, and I made sure it was so. He was quite a steely young fellow, and we both knew that our misbegotten pairing would take some beating.
Both tournaments progressed satisfactorily. I treated my captaincy of the Podex like it was the Ashes. There was to be no messing out, everyone had a role. My own batting was deeply boring but effective. Podex gameplay (a unique game I've never come across elsewhere) was cleverly staggered so that no one could bat on for ever. You could get to 14 however you wanted, but then you had to score in 2s (the pitch was about 10 yards long, and the bowling underarm, the bat used like a rounders bat, to explain),then 3s when you got to 21, 4s at 26, 5s at 31, and 6s at 36, so it was hard to stay in too long. I would play safely and gradually, not taking any risks to always get high 20s or 30s. It did the job. We made the final.
And in the final, I was playing a team captained by none other than my decade-long sporting team mate Sam, captain (to my vice-captain) of the School 1st XI. And I messed it up. I think I had a sense of doom all the way, even though we were the stronger team. For the first time in the tournament, I was run out for a meagre 15, but even then, we only lost by about 3. Damn Sam, always getting the better of me.
So I took a sense of loss and despair into the Padder endgame. We'd eased through the rounds, and then came the semi-final. Padder was a great game - you could baseline rally like Djokovic and Nadal in singles but in doubles, it could be frantic serve and volley. It wasn't necessarily the best tennis players that triumphed, it was possible to work out your own technique to prosper. Serves were underarm but could involve all manners of odd spin. I've never been all that good at tennis, but I loved playing padder and generally, over the 5 years, had it pretty well worked out.
I generally played quite a defensive game, happy to sit back and let the opposition make mistakes. I remember in the semi, our opponents were dominating the net, hitting good volleys and smashes, and it was tight early on. We'd built up a good crowd - I think people were mainly booing me (I encouraged that kind of behaviour). Another rally, they loomed over the net as we retreated. Here came a big smash, surely a winner, or I could hope to loop it back into play. But instead, as it whistled towards me, I just decided to smash it back. The chances of getting such a shot right are miniscule, but I nailed it. I remember the strangest thing that it went past the smasher's shoulder before he was even through his previous shot. I heard people just saying "What a shot", "Did you see that shot?" and I knew I'd done something unusual.
We won that match and then won the final pretty easily, without any great need to play any more shots like that. I'm sure the overall success was pretty hollow and godless and unchristian, but I've always remembered the sheer pleasure of that shot, and that's enough for me.
I'm probably better when things are coming towards me quickly than slowly. I dropped innumerable dollies when playing cricket, but was more likely than most to stick my hand out and catch a screamer. Likewise, I could have plenty of problems with a dodgy slow medium bowler, but have never come across anyone bowling too fast for me - I've probably not faced anyone much above 80mph, which would be pretty medium-ish in pro cricket, so i'm not suggesting there isn't bowling which is too fast for me, just that I've found, on those rare occasions I've faced something close to genuine pace, I've rather thrived. I think it's good eyesight/hand-eye co-ordination, combined with insidious panic if I think too much, which has made me the sportsperson I am!
So, yes, that was my one shot, one sweetly struck shot into the abyss. Perhaps, after all, this is one of the most self-indulgent posts of all, but, ah, it was a good one for me.
I never had a shot, not like that. At least I don't think so. If I did, it came and went without my noticing, which is probably for the best.
So the concept of "One shot" can mean something different. It simply reminds us of a time where we nailed it, where we hit or struck one shot with such pure timing, such out-of-context perfection that, years or decades later, that one split second still lives on through the haze that surrounds it.
And we imagine Alan Partridge soundtracking it by saying "Shit, what a goal/shot/smash!"
I'm not quite talking about the "aristeia". In The Iliad, our common heroes have brief periods when they are at their very best, when they rise above themselves and destroy all before them. In modern parlance, there's "the zone", but the zone lasts longer, it's an area where top class sportspeople find themselves almost incapable of making a mistake. People like me never find the zone, but we can, if we're lucky, occasionally, have "one shot". One shocking crack, which shows us what we'd really be capable of if only we were capable of it ...
There was a goal. It was in the waning of my football abilities, after my first DVT, without great acceleration, with little spark left. My team, Atholl 1965, had been promoted but the promotion coincided unfortunately with a lot of our better players either having to give up or just falling away a bit. We had a horrible season in the top division, where all the joy went out of our game and we barely mustered a goal a game. An old rival, Primrose Hill, who we'd had many a close game with, were now a far better side than us so we entered our away fixture with trepidation and, as it started, we were overrun.
Still, our captain Chris managed to get to the byline on the right and looped over a deep cross. I hung back and it found its way, on the volley, to me just outside the area. And I caught it, on the full, with the outside of my left and it bent perfectly just inside the post. Just like that. Perfection. Probably the best goal I ever scored. Completely out of context. I was rubbish for the rest of the game, we lost 3-1. I was rubbish for the rest of the season. I'm not sure I ever scored another goal in a competitive fixture. Good one to end on, though. The most perfect strike of my life.
There was a shot, just in front of square on the up, which went to the boundary so fast and across the adjacent pitch, in a cricket match when I was 16. Didn't even feel it. There are shots in cricket where everyone, fielders, spectators, umpires, stops, almost shocked.
But my favourite, my one shot I'll never forget, that was with a racquet in hand, in a weird little sport, on a summer's day. It requires me to dig into my past as a teenage Christian, but I hope you'll forgive me. The version of teenage Christianity I was lucky enough to engage with was smart enough to know that for teenage boys, the best way to sell God and faith and fellowship was via near-relentless semi-competitive sport.
We went on these house parties, every Easter, every Summer, in some grand country school. The Easter one, we played hockey, a version of hockey where you could use both sides of the stick. That was organised, in a league format. Besides that, there was football, pool, table tennis, table football, every day.
The Summer House Party, down in Dorset, with great weather and huge fields, there was a bit of cricket, football, touch rugby, capture the flag, there was table tennis, pool, table football, there was, in a league format, an excellent cross between cricket and rounders called Podex, and there was Padder, basically short tennis. The Padder tournament was a huge knockout doubles tournament with everyone on the holiday (somewhere between 120 and 140) taking part.
There was a bit of time for other things besides sport, you know, god and what not, but not enough to get too irritating.
I think the sport was meant to teach us a lesson about good will and teamwork and good sportsmanship, about everyone getting a go, everyone making a contribution, about trying hard but not too hard, and all that shit was tough for me to take. I wanted to win and I wanted to be the star. If my dalliance with faith did one thing above all for me (and it did a lot) it was to gradually knock my level of self-absorbed competitiveness down to a just-about-acceptable level, but gradually and just-about-acceptable are the operative words.
From starting at the house parties when I was 13, I went through year after year of the joy of just playing sport mixed with frustration at a) not winning all the time and b) being mocked for wanting to win all the time, both in the casual games and the organised competitions. After almost winning the padder doubles in the first year (they put the youngest with the oldest) I went through years of not getting close, and I was convinced I was deliberately being put with duff partners, or in slightly duff teams, to teach me a gentle lesson in humility.
That might seem like paranoia, but actually it might well not have been. By the time I got to the summer at the end of my last school year, I was in charge, or rather the primary sidekick, and my friend Stephen and I were charged, amongst many things, with organising the sporting competitions, which meant rigorously and carefully picking out partnerships and teams, trying to create good match-ups and be generally fair. We tried to avoid putting two sporting superstars together and tried not to make any Podex team too strong.
Well, to an extent. I took advantage of my position to at least give myself a chance. I put together a nice, solid, podex team for myself (not ridiculously rigged, you understand) and then, perhaps feeling a little guilty, chose a fairly average young padder team mate. Decent, but not great.
Well, we lost our first round match, and we were out of the tournament, but that's when fate intervened. One of the better young player's allotted partner couldn't come, so he needed a fitting replacement - as the right age, and out of the tournament already, I was ideal, and I made sure it was so. He was quite a steely young fellow, and we both knew that our misbegotten pairing would take some beating.
Both tournaments progressed satisfactorily. I treated my captaincy of the Podex like it was the Ashes. There was to be no messing out, everyone had a role. My own batting was deeply boring but effective. Podex gameplay (a unique game I've never come across elsewhere) was cleverly staggered so that no one could bat on for ever. You could get to 14 however you wanted, but then you had to score in 2s (the pitch was about 10 yards long, and the bowling underarm, the bat used like a rounders bat, to explain),then 3s when you got to 21, 4s at 26, 5s at 31, and 6s at 36, so it was hard to stay in too long. I would play safely and gradually, not taking any risks to always get high 20s or 30s. It did the job. We made the final.
And in the final, I was playing a team captained by none other than my decade-long sporting team mate Sam, captain (to my vice-captain) of the School 1st XI. And I messed it up. I think I had a sense of doom all the way, even though we were the stronger team. For the first time in the tournament, I was run out for a meagre 15, but even then, we only lost by about 3. Damn Sam, always getting the better of me.
So I took a sense of loss and despair into the Padder endgame. We'd eased through the rounds, and then came the semi-final. Padder was a great game - you could baseline rally like Djokovic and Nadal in singles but in doubles, it could be frantic serve and volley. It wasn't necessarily the best tennis players that triumphed, it was possible to work out your own technique to prosper. Serves were underarm but could involve all manners of odd spin. I've never been all that good at tennis, but I loved playing padder and generally, over the 5 years, had it pretty well worked out.
I generally played quite a defensive game, happy to sit back and let the opposition make mistakes. I remember in the semi, our opponents were dominating the net, hitting good volleys and smashes, and it was tight early on. We'd built up a good crowd - I think people were mainly booing me (I encouraged that kind of behaviour). Another rally, they loomed over the net as we retreated. Here came a big smash, surely a winner, or I could hope to loop it back into play. But instead, as it whistled towards me, I just decided to smash it back. The chances of getting such a shot right are miniscule, but I nailed it. I remember the strangest thing that it went past the smasher's shoulder before he was even through his previous shot. I heard people just saying "What a shot", "Did you see that shot?" and I knew I'd done something unusual.
We won that match and then won the final pretty easily, without any great need to play any more shots like that. I'm sure the overall success was pretty hollow and godless and unchristian, but I've always remembered the sheer pleasure of that shot, and that's enough for me.
I'm probably better when things are coming towards me quickly than slowly. I dropped innumerable dollies when playing cricket, but was more likely than most to stick my hand out and catch a screamer. Likewise, I could have plenty of problems with a dodgy slow medium bowler, but have never come across anyone bowling too fast for me - I've probably not faced anyone much above 80mph, which would be pretty medium-ish in pro cricket, so i'm not suggesting there isn't bowling which is too fast for me, just that I've found, on those rare occasions I've faced something close to genuine pace, I've rather thrived. I think it's good eyesight/hand-eye co-ordination, combined with insidious panic if I think too much, which has made me the sportsperson I am!
So, yes, that was my one shot, one sweetly struck shot into the abyss. Perhaps, after all, this is one of the most self-indulgent posts of all, but, ah, it was a good one for me.
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