Reluctantly following in the flight path of Bouffon and Byrne

‘IDON’T dive.’ Better believe it, everyone – young Persephone does not dive. Never has. Never will. The way in which our daughter pronounced the three words should have made this clear, beyond all argument: ‘ I don’t dive.’ This was no casual announcement. This was no throwaway remark. This was royalty making it clear that Her Highness does not lower herself to buttering her own sandwiches or changing her own spark plugs. She could no more be expected to dive than to sleep on a mattress under which there is a pea or some other irritating foreign object. Diving, her regal loftiness made it abundantly plain, is something best left to less refined mortals. ‘I don’t dive.’

She was speaking to her goalkeeping coach. The poor man could be excused, I suppose, for thinking at first that he had not heard her correctly. Watching the early season training session from the side-line, I could see his brow furrow. He was about to join the list of well-intentioned sporting mentors who have struggled to convey basic sporting skills to Persephone.

There was the camogie trainer who took the time to show how a ball should be picked up on the end of the stick. There was the athletics enthusiast who conceived the notion she might make a hurdler. There was the rugby stalwart who made the startling revelation that the game involved collisions. All of them failed to capture the attention or imagination of someone for whom sport is more a social exercise than a physical one.

Now, here was Eoghan attempting to suggest that she might consider sprawling on the ground in an effort to block attackers or leaping to intercept shots on her goal. He felt that diving goes with the territory but Persephone was having none of it. She all but laughed in his face at the absurdity of the proposal. She is a believer in remaining upright in the face of opposition attacks and she could not be induced go to ground. She might stick out an arm or, perchance, a leg to make a save, but lying down was simply not on her agenda.

‘I don’t dive.’ End of.

In vain did Eoghan seek to inspire young Persephone with talk of the great goalkeepers, past or present. The roll call included Pat Jennings, Stephen Cluxton and Gianluigi Bouffon, all of them capable of diving to great effect when called upon to do so.

Or how about a female role model? None better than Emma Byrne of Arsenal. Surely, Emma would never have collected more than 100 caps for Ireland had she been worried about dirtying her shorts. But the fact is that the Our Town ladies’ second team do not perform at the same high level as Arsenal.

The no-dive, no-frills approach has proven largely suited to life in the lower divisions. Persephone starred this term as she demonstrated that effective goalkeeping is just as much about getting the angles right as about being prepared to go from vertical to horizontal. The goalie who is the correct place to start with has no need to take off in flight, she coolly asserted. Once she worked out that a well-timed advance from the goalmouth reduces the target available to opposing strikers, then she began to go through games unbeaten.

Unfortunately, Hermione and I missed the fixture in which her side took on the formidable might of the league leaders and emerged with a very creditable scoreless draw after a backsto-the-wall performance. What a wonderful clean sheet for the intrepid, if statuesque, keeper.

Persephone played down her contribution to this outstanding result but her friend Oprah told us later that our girl had been awesome – and she had the video footage taken on her phone to prove it. The pictures showed the upstanding one repeatedly springing left and right to pull off mighty blocks or hurling herself head first into a ruck of players with no thought of her own safety.

When our daughter came home that evening I smilingly congratulated her on overcoming her inhibitions, only to be met with show of incomprehension.

‘Oh, Da, I told you – I don’t dive…though maybe I do sometimes fall over.’