My first and final word about soccer

When I first entered a Catholic monastery, we lived in a remote part of Zululand and we did not have other men in the area to play rugby with. This did not stop our Brother Superior from getting us to play it. He had been a rugby player in university and lived, breathed (and prayed?) rugby. Sport was mandatory. Brother Superior's philosophy was "mens sana in corpore sano" - a healthy mind in a healthy body. But many of the young monks were not athletic and they hated rugby as too rough.

I also came to hate rugby because of the position that I had to play: hooker. No, that didn't mean that I was the monastery's resident whore. A rugby hooker is the guy who is in the front and middle of the scrum between the two biggest men on the team. A hooker has to be small and quick (which I was) because his job is to grab the ball from the opposing team and then throw it backwards out of the scrum. I hated it. I got beard-burn from the two bruisers on either side of me and had their stinky armpits almost up my nose.

The only sports teams available to play against were African soccer teams in the nearby missions. So Brother Superior introduced us to soccer which was unheard of in South Africa at that time. In those days soccer was regarded as a game for Africans. Whites only played rugby - and cricket in summer. There's a saying: "Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans and rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen."

Being small and quick helped me a lot in soccer and I was soon adept at it. I could run fast and had nimble feet. It became my favorite sport while I was in the monastery but I lost all interest in it after I left. When I moved to England a few years later I found that football (soccer) not the Church of England is the state religion there. It's a fun game to play but I never understood the cult surrounding it.