The Net Rippled
Albert Camus was a goalkeeper, semi-pro. Agatha Christie was among the first foreigners to surf Waikiki, cruising in on a 10ft board. Jack Kerouac, a running back, got into Columbia University on an American football scholarship. Virginia Woolf played cricket. So did Samuel Beckett. He was county level, known for his gritty defence. Norman Mailer had a tasty left hook and a boxing ring built in his barn. Ken Kesey was Oregon’s most promising middleweight wrestler.
It’s hard not to be amused by the thought of these great writers playing sport. As a culture, we still lean on the cliché that literary people should be pale, indoorsy, scribbling by candlelight as the infection spreads to our lungs. And similarly, there’s the understanding that anyone who can curl a 30-yard free kick into the top right corner must, by definition, be unable to write a poem. It’s not surprising, then, that young boys in particular — for whom football is the highest social currency — often turn away from reading and writing.
This is part of the reason that, 15 years ago, a league of writers’ footballs teams was created. The idea was to show that you don’t have to choose between the mind and the body. You can be, all at once, a writer, a striker, a reader, a keeper. Which is a beautiful idea in theory. But there does remain the problem of finding writers who can actually play. A few weeks ago, I travelled to Vienna with the England Writers’ Football Team. Or it would be more accurate to say that I tried to travel to Vienna. Myself and two fellow writers had shown ourselves resolutely unable to transcend another common stereotype: that creative people lack basic skills of navigation and planning. We got on the wrong tube train then we changed to the right one but missed our stop and then, when we did get to the airport, I didn’t have my passport. I was both an idiot and a cliché.
I booked a replacement flight and arrived 12 hours later. I had missed dinner and drinks at a place called Centimeter, a bar themed around the metric system. I learned that the team had drunk two metres of beer, eaten two metres of curly blood sausage and two metres of lentil stew. There is probably a compound German word for the way I felt as they held out their phones and scrolled through the pictures. What’s the opposite of Fomo? Ramo: relief at missing out.
The next morning, we were guided through Vienna by one of the Austrian team, a kind and witty novelist called Stefan Soder. He joked and smiled as he herded us on to the tram, helped us buy tickets. He smiled and joked as he showed us to our changing rooms. He put his arms round our shoulders and grinned for the joint team photo. And then, just as we were saying what a lovely man he was and how we would like to read his novel about four generations of one Alpine farming family, he pulled on his Austria shirt, wrapped a blue bandana around his head and became — at the exact moment that the referee blew his whistle — a monster.
He spent the next 90 minutes screaming at us, hating us, his eyes burning holes in whoever dared to tackle him. “Get your hands off me!” he hissed, with genuine disgust, when I accidentally touched his shirt.
To be fair to Stefan, he wasn’t the only player who had switched personality, Incredible Hulk-style. Our captain, Andrew Keatley, playwright and actor — known for his complex, delicate portrayals of modern men under pressure — was soon screaming: “You are the worst fucking referee I’ve ever seen.” This was when we were winning 5–1 and the game was basically over. Luckily for Andrew, the referee spoke no English.
The best way to forgive the behaviour of Stefan and Andrew is to think they were working hard to undermine the stereotype of the quiet, sensitive writer. With their flamboyant obnoxiousness, they were fighting the good fight against cliché.
They weren’t the only ones who transformed. All over the pitch, we were rapidly growing less likeable. One of the most interesting changes was in our goalkeeper, and football writer, Tomasz Mortimer. While listening to Andrew yell at the referee, Tom had wanted to say, “Calm down. We’re winning. What does it matter?” But then when Tom considered that question
more closely, he started to think that, really, what did any of this matter? Winning and losing were irrelevant once you realised that the white markings of a football pitch were pitiful attempts to force meaning upon a universe completely beyond our control or understanding. These kinds of thoughts can take hold of a goalkeeper who has no shots to save. Albert Camus probably came up with his best, bleakest ideas while standing alone between the sticks.
As the game approached its final minutes, there remained one key stereotype unchallenged. We had yet to prove that any of us were elite athletes. There had been cheap goals, clumsy tackles, pulled hamstrings, but no moments of transcendence. Step forward PJ, Liverpudlian writer of pitch-black short stories. He smashed in a screamer from 30 yards, the ball arrowing into the top right corner. It was an unprecedented moment of genuine grace.
More importantly, his goal had been seen by the Under-17s squad from Wiener-Sport-Club, a third-tier Austrian football team who were waiting to use the pitch after us. I don’t want to stereotype those boys and say that none of them were already poets and novelists. Maybe some were. But by the time the net rippled, they must have been wondering what they could do to hit a ball so sweetly. The answer, of course: start writing. ○