Social media has this nasty habit of throwing up pictures and posts from your past, under the deception: ‘here’s some memories for you to look back on’.
A piccy flashed up recently brought a lump to FSOM’s throat and caused a tear to trickle down his cheek.
It wasn’t the pics sending him strolling down Memory Lane of his magical trip to Monument Valley in the States where he spent a few days with the Navajo tribe, nor a snow-covered Austrian landscape where FSOM has just fudged his way down a black run.
It was a picture taken in his back garden in the process of freeing up some space in the garage.
Leaning against a chair which was headed to the dump was a pair of football boots, a cricket bat and some pads, a set of ancient golf clubs, a pair of ski boots and a tennis racket. A sporting life over and done with, and ready to be consigned to the tip.
It was the saddest sight FSOM had seen since that shot rang out in Bambi, and picked out of the purse, the key to the memory vaults.
When FSOM first started hoofing the pigskin around the variety of football boots available was negligible.
As one of only two under-age players (the other was Pete Simmonds whose cousin George Jones was an actual real professional with Bury) in the St Mary’s CofE under-11 team (yes, the same St Mary’s church from which Southampton FC was born, hence the nickname) the old man decided his little starlet needed some proper boots.
The danger of the old man picking your boots would be that you would go on to the pitch looking like Stanley Matthews, shod in brown leather monstrosities where studs were hammered into soles with nails that came over the ankle and with the sort of toe-caps steelworkers wore to protect their feet from falling pig-iron.
‘They were good enough for me,’ said the old man, ‘protected your ankles and you didn’t hurt your toes,’ he announced, conveniently forgetting that as a nippy little winger, I tended to kick a football with a bit of give in it, unlike the bone and gristle he used to lump as a genteel and sporting centre-half for the Southampton Dockers’ team.
Luckily it was the mid-1960s and the hiking boots that passed for football boots from the 50s, were on their way out along with ration books.
Not that there was a huge choice for the young whippersnapper who still wore shorts to school and whose shoe size was not much bigger than his sister’s.
FSOM harboured hopes and dreams of getting a pair of those swanky boots with three white stripes he had seen the top stars wearing in Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly or Shoot!, but the box which the assistant dragged down from the shelf had the name Stuburt on the side.
The contents weren’t too hideous; they were all black, cut below the ankle bone and lacking a concrete toecap. The soles had rubber studs and the boots were lightweight enough to stop them feeling like you might have been volunteered for a deep-sea diving mission.
Thus, was launched the career of FSOM.
The Stuburts required dubbin to waterproof them. Dubbin was a form of wax polish to keep the leather supple enough to prevent the boots becoming like a couple of wooden boxes on the feet and these boots soaked it up like a whale shark sucking up plankton.
They served him well for a couple of years as St Mary’s won the Southampton Schools (West) Division, but he still hankered for something a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye to mark FSOM’s football boots out from a pair of school shoes.
Like most kids, in the run-up to Christmas FSOM would wait until he had the house to himself to go fossicking about in the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe, having worked out that for some reason Santa stored all the presents there prior to collecting them for delivery on Christmas Eve.
This particular fishing trip proved fruitful as he unearthed a bright blue shoebox with the words ‘Die marke mit dem drei riemen’ written on it.
From his extensive knowledge of German gleaned from Commando comics, which taught him such useful phrases as ‘achtung’, ‘Gott in himmel’ and ‘or you, Tommy, ze var is over’, FSOM worked out that the words translated to ‘The Brand with Three Stripes’ and sure enough, they were only a pair of adidas Brazil boots.
With his heart beating faster than a pair of rutting shrews in excitement, he carefully wrapped the tissue paper back around the boots, replaced the lid and put the box back exactly where he found it, and counted down the sleeps until Christmas Day when, with acting skills which would have won him an Oscar, he feigned surprise as he unwrapped the treasured boots, which he promptly and proudly wore around the house all day in the face of his mum’s fears that he would wear the carpet out.
The initial joy and ecstasy of getting his first pair of proper branded boots, meant that subsequent purchases became a bit ho-hum and regular.
Adidas continued to be the boot of choice in his teen years, mainly because they flooded the market, but occasionally other brands adorned FSOM’s twinkling feet.
The arrival of Kevin Keegan at Southampton in 1980 was a bonanza for French brand Patrick. Just about anybody who played on the pitches of Hampshire (except in the Portsmouth area) was kitted out in the brand with the two stripes on the heel.
When Keegan scuttled off to Newcastle two years later, household bins were full of discarded Patrick boots. FSOM was among those who unceremoniously dumped his Patricks in the bin. You could tell which players worked as council binnies as they wore the Patrick boots they had retrieved on their rounds.
Looking for a new brand was helped by sharp-eyed shysters like Paul Lewis. His brother was in the Royal Navy. He joined on the promise of TV adverts which proclaimed ‘join the Navy and see the world’ but on signing on the dotted line was posted as a clerk-writer (mainly on the grounds he could hold a pen and single-handedly sign his name without sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth). Thus, the world that he saw were the Navy stores in Portsmouth, Devonport and Rosyth.
But it worked to the advantage of the jolly boys of Lyndhurst FC. Working in the Navy stores gave Paul Lewis’ brother access to the Aladdin’s cave that are the RN Stores, and with it, the incentives companies were ready to offer to try and blag a Navy contract. These included sponsorship of the Navy sports teams, who got most of their kit and equipment buckshee.
With his eye on the chance of trousering a few sovs, Paul Lewis arranged with his brother to siphon off a few dozen pairs of Gola boots, which he would flog to us to what seemed a ridiculous knockdown price, but clearly at a level which made a nice little earner for his brother and him.
It was all as hooky as the villain in Peter Pan but in the vast labyrinthine ordering and bookkeeping nobody would have traced an order for 25 pairs of football boots, apparently for submariners on one of HM’s nuclear subs.
Any pricks on conscience were eased by the fact Gola was a patriotic British make, even if the flashings on them were a bit garish. The arrival of Football Italia on Channel Four in 1992 marked a sea change in football-boot buying habits and as an effete, fashionista trailblazer, FSOM was looking for something avant-garde to cover his tootsies.
With the smugness that comes from adopting a brand that only a few cognoscenti appreciate, FSOM settled in front of the haunted fish tank on a Sunday afternoon to carefully study what the stars of Serie A – which was the top league in Europe at the time – wore.
FSOM was particularly taken by the brand which Ruud Gullit and many of his Milan team-mates wore, Lotto.
So it was that FSOM used all the resourcefulness of Colombo to track down Lotto football boots and thus spark one of the most insane and outrageous shopping bouts since Imelda Marcos raided Macy’s shoe department.
High on the list was a pair of Lotto trainers, to adorn the feet at those times when studded football boots weren’t appropriate.
Next was a shell suit. Shell suits were all the rage, even if they did tend to make the wearer look like a Scouse shoplifter, but with the gift of hindsight FSOM’s Lotto shell suit was particularly vile, a bright turquoise in colour, garnished with the Lotto logo down the sleeves and the sides of the bottoms.
There is a body-wracking shudder and wince of embarrassment when FSOM recalls he actually wore this monstrosity in public places, The static electricity the shell suit gave off made FSOM crackle like a dozen crisp packets, while making passing ladies’ hart stand on end like the Bride of Frankenstein, and light metal objects not nailed down would hurtle in his direction.
For some unknown reason and in a moment of commercial suicide, Lotto decided to branch out into cricket. Why an Italian company decided to do this, only they would know, but it was enough for FSOM. He bought a pair of Lotto cricket shoes.
They weren’t the worst but instead of spikes, the sole was made up of multi mini rubber studs, which did not provide the best grip when turning for a quick second run or delivering FSOM’s slow left-arm flighted filth.
But as he slipped and lost his footing in his delivery slide, causing him to yank his delivery short, he could always console himself as he watched the ball go up into the atmosphere and sail away high and long enough to serve an in-flight meal and show a movie on it, that he looked cool in a pair of Italian cricket shoes.
Alas and alack, time and ageing limbs caught up with FSOM and his sporting days were numbered. Ever the trendsetting boulevardier, his last pair of football boots were Italian, a pair made by Fila, better known for kitting out Bjorn Borg in his heyday.
When the boots split, FSOM realised it was time to hang them up, and into the garage they went, along with the skis and ski boots, the tennis racket, the cricket bat and the golf clubs that had been stored there safely like unused munitions since the days they became dangerous in the hands of the ill-tempered club-chucker that was FSOM on the golf course.
That’s it. A sporting life in one picture and ended by one trip to the tip.
Now where did I put that ping-pong bat and chess set?
