On Friday Hat-trick of own goals merits sympathy
MEIKAYLA Moore wrote herself into the sporting history books with a feat accomplished while playing in a women’s football international for New Zealand against the United States.
Before half-time, Meikayla had scored a hat-trick, and a so-called ‘perfect’ one at that, a feat football anoraks deem to mean one with the left foot, one with the right foot and one with the head. Such hat-tricks are very rare and are normally to be cherished.
The trouble was that Meikayla’s goals all found their way into New Zealand’s net, and her perfect hattrick of own goals made her an overnight sensation in the harsh and unforgiving world of social media.
Football fans can be a harsh bunch, and Meikayla copped plenty of scorn, much of it from people who have never played a competitive game of football in their lives, let alone represented their country with distinction nearly 50 times.
I have nothing but sympathy and understanding for Meikayla, though, having put the ball into my own net on plenty of occasions. The pick of them, perhaps, came at Barton Downs in Torquay one evening towards the end of what was probably the 1984-85 season. I was playing for Brixham United against Upton Vale in what would have been a lively encounter, as matches between those two teams always were.
Like a young ‘Kaiser’ Franz Beckenbauer, I was in the centre of the Brixham defence with my old mate the Caerphilly Kid in goal behind me. We were in a “they shall not pass” kind of mood.
It was a midweek evening and there was plenty at stake. It was coming towards the end of the season, with a whiff of promotion in the air.
We started the match well enough, as I recall, and were in control. Then a harmless enough through ball was punted up from the opposing side towards the spot where I stood, roughly five yards outside my own penalty area, patrolling and preparing to repel intruders.
It was a warm, languid kind of an evening with an orange sun low in the sky, and I was in no hurry to deal with the oncoming ball. In those days, when you passed the ball back to the goalkeeper, he could pick it up with his hands before launching it back up the field again, so I thought I would do just that.
With what I believed then was a deft flick of the right foot, I guided the ball back towards the spot where I believed the Caerphilly Kid to be, without so much as looking over my shoulder to check. That’s how confident I was.
“Oh, dear,” said the Kid in his measured South Wales tones from surprisingly close by, and with that we both turned round and watched helplessly as the ball bounced away across the hard-packed earth and rolled gently across the line and into our own net.
It turns out the Caerphilly Kid had been standing close beside me all the time, and had not unreasonably expected me to deal with the approaching ball myself, without the need to involve him at all.
We lost the game, as you may have guessed by now. There was scorn and ridicule, and the Caerphilly Kid mentions it to this day when we are together over a beer.
I had done it before and have done it plenty of times since, but it’s a lonely place to be – lonely enough in front of two men and a dog on a summer evening at Barton Downs, let alone with a watching TV audience of millions and a planet full of internet pundits who never made a mistake in their lives.
There was scorn and ridicule, and the Caerphilly Kid mentions it to this day when we are together over a beer