Summer Hockey (part 1)

I recently decided I wanted to do something active with my spare time over summer. So I was delighted last week when a notice appeared, pinned, on the office cork board asking for staff to put their names down for the Company Summer Mixed Hockey Team.

Beginners welcome! it said, novices will be encouraged! Meeting once a week but no need to play all the games, just come along when you can! it stated.

Excellent.

Although I had never played hockey before in my life, this sounded just what I needed – a few beers, some laughs, maybe a cake or two and a knock-a-bout game of hockey on the grass with a few of the company chix in the late evening summer sun.

Using my best hand, I stuck down the name: Greville Tombs.

One thing was clear before the first game – I needed to get just a little more fit. Didn’t want to disgrace myself, after all. I began to covertly train in the office: Filling the photocopier to the maximum paper level, selecting my PC’s default printer to the one at the far side of the room, fluorescent highlighting reports with two colours, taking the stairs instead of the lift. Only, because I had essentially loosely based the training regime on the first Rocky film, it didn’t really make much of a difference – it being an 8 minute montage regime and all.

Turning up to the first game it became very apparent that this was not the genial summer game that the notice had hinted at. The company team was generally made up not of cakes and chix, but of management. I was the only grunt. This was serious. We had opposition. I was instantly handed a strip, told to strap on my shin guards and pop in my gum shield and get out onto the pitch to warm up.

I put on the red, cotton, polo shirt. The badge printed large onto the right breast. The fit, slightly neat with sleeves tailored tight around the bicep. I commented on how I was loving the retro 70’s styling and was glad I was lucky enough that it accessorised with my red socks and long green shorts. I thought it might have been a radical move, green shorts, but it looked like I could pull the fashion off with this top after all, so things were already looking up.

To distract from the fact I had neither shin guards nor gum shield as I asked if there was a spare hockey stick, because… well, I didn’t have one of those either.

I was handed an old wooden hockey stick, a thump club of a thing. The type I would see leaning against the wall at the back of the P.E. storeroom when I was a lad. The type that may have been stained with blood. I took it, gauged its considerable weight and said, for no reason other than I felt I should say something sporty, “I am mainly usually deployed on the left flank.”

Then the game was on.

As I ran up and down the left channel with my oak branch stick in hand while watching the fitter, taller players speed around, far ahead of me, slapping the ball between them with their lightweight, angled headed graphite and titanium composite sticks I had a thought: It was like Bjorn Borg when he had his weird comeback at Wimbledon in the early 1990’s and he brought with him an old wooden racket from 1981. Only he could play tennis. So I was more like Bjorn Borg if he had turned up to a golf championship in the early 1990’s with only one golf club made of bamboo.

When the match ended, and not a minute too soon as I was veering close to being seen on my knees, throwing up at the sidelines from fatigue by my manager, I asked what had happened. We had beaten the yellow tops 4-1. Brilliant!

And so, as I headed for home, dramatically hobbling from the hour of jogging on the left, unable to see straight from the dehydration, arms close to dislocation from the lumber of the old-era hockey stick, I had another thought: Bjorn Borg played with his 15 year old racket and was massively unsuccessful. I, on the other hand, had just won. Bjorn Borg? Yeah, he wishes he was me.