Cod Almighty | Article

by Alistair Wilkinson

17 May 2007

Previously in Not Man And Boy: Al Wilkinson invests in a 'ten-bob swerver' and takes his two-and-a-half-year-old son George out to the back yard for his first kickabout. George learns the word 'kick!' and makes encouraging progress on his technique at the same time, but his burgeoning obsession with the beautiful game is eclipsed by a fixation with watching Charlie and Lola on CBeebies. Can Al set him back on the straight and narrow...?

There are few things in life more satisfying than kicking a football. The once leathery and now, thankfully, plasticy thwack launching that oh-so important sphere high and far. It just feels right. One of the few things is kicking it at a goal, and getting it in is another. But the most satisfying of all is kicking it to my son, George.

"Kick!" he enthuses as he wellies the ball. It's very cute.

For now the length of George's legs means the ball comes up over his knees, but I'm not going to let that stop me from striking out on the long road to creating a football and, more importantly, a Grimsby Town fan. This is not brainwashing; it could be coercion. I'll need to be careful.

Now, we have a chicken and egg conundrum: to be a football fan does one need to like playing football? To like playing football does one need to be a football fan?

I was a late-comer to the Pontoon, being 15 on my first trip in the 89/90 season. I didn't play football and I wasn't a football fan. I'd been to Blundell Park many times with my dad, always sitting in the Findus or the Main Stand and had never caught the bug. Ultimately it wasn't Alan Buckley's football or the genius of Gary Birtles that finally turned my head - although they helped - it was the Pontoon. That rocking and rolling wooden-stepped terrace: it really was mental; ideal for a 15-year-old.

What about a toddler of 30 months? Is he ready for his first pilgrimage? Sadly no, George doesn't do well in loud and unfamiliar places and his goldfish-like attention span would see him demanding home before the PA had even given me a headache. I need to encourage him to want to go. I need to make the mighty Mariners so damned attractive his timidity will be forgotten. I need to make the thought of watching those black and white shirts so incredibly exciting that he'll be standing on his chair yelling so loud that I'll be threatening to take him home if he doesn't behave himself.

Where to begin?

George has outgrown the house during winter, and now that the sun has got his hat on we have gleefully broken the seasonal confines and headed for our small back yard with its tiny patch of still-muddy grass. This will be our classroom, our dojo and our puppet theatre of dreams. I feel the Pontoon calling my first born, but does he?

We've been kicking a ball.

At first it's amazing, pretty soon it'll be good. I'm a bad dad at times, and I'm going to let you in on one of the best kept secrets of parenting. While it's an amazing, life-changing, eye-opening, incredibly difficult and all-round the best-thing-you'll-ever-do experience, it's also very boring.

Playdough, for instance. He's very keen on the malleable stuff, and while I have no problem with the creative side of it, I do wish he could play with it on his own. I'm bored of Playdough. At least I can shape into little footballs, but the carpet dictates that we can't kick them. Football will save me from tedious toddlers.

Wherever we go there must be football.

Grandma's house: football. Granny's house: football. Playgroup: football. When choosing his playgroup I noticed that the one round the corner had a set of inflatable goalposts. Excellent.

George's soft tappings and swings and missings and falling on nappied bottoms are good, they're even adorable. A little bit of reading tells me that kicking is a gross motor skill. Motor skills are actions performed by your body which require the movement of muscles. There are two types of motor skill: gross which are movements of limbs and the whole body; and fine, which are smaller movements such as those of fingers and toes and lips and tongues.

"Kick!" But he doesn't, not really. He just sort of pushes the ball with the lower half of his leg. I'm thinking that his gross skills aren't quite there yet; I can't see him helping out with the penalties anytime soon. Mind you, he does do the ball pushing thing with the lower half of both legs - he's my two-footed little genius.

What am I doing to educate my little boy? Or, as I want him to support Grimsby, what am I doing to 'learn' him?

I'm encouraging his 'kick!' or at least I'm trying to give an acceptable avenue for his love of kicking. This two footed genius can kick balls, toys, furniture, mummy and daddy and baby brother. So, for the sake of his education and our bruises, mummy and I have invested in a football-shaped cushion and a sponge tennis ball for inside 'kicks!' and we have a 'ten-bob-swerver' for the back yard kick-about (ten-bob-swervers are now a quid! That's twenty bob! When did that happen?) Thomas the Tank Engine stymies the progress outside. George has a freaky-faced ride-on tempting him away from the ball.

Inside is a much more devious foe: the TV show Charlie and Lola. C&L top George's 'to do' list for much of the day. For the uninitiated, C&L is a cartoon on CBeebies featuring a nauseatingly positive role model in Charlie, and a thoroughly entertaining little madam in Lola.

There's hope though. Charlie may be a do-gooder, but he's got a competitive streak in him that's just itching to burst out, and he likes to kick a football; pay attention, George, watch Charlie kick the ball.

I sowed the seeds of Grimsby Town early on. There was plenty of black and white and lots of balls to play with from a very young age. I bought him his first strip at 18 months, and last summer, when he was 1¾ and first running around in his new proper-little-man shape, I kicked the ball around him, showing him, tempting him, teasing him, making it look cool, like a smoking ad without the fear of premature fatality. Of course, dads aren't cool, and to prove this he kept picking it up. I would kick, he would pick. This wasn't something to yell at him for, and so I didn't; I'm not that bad a dad.

This spring, the picking has almost stopped. In fact, and I'm very impressed by this, he now picks to place. The ball has to be just so before 'Kick!' and with his arms spread wide he launches the ball, Thomas Pinault-esque, across the grass.

David Beckham's dad made his son control the ball rather than simply 'Kick!' He had that future England captain in tears such was his insistence that he get it right. Will I make my boy cry like Beckham so that he can bend it like Gilbert?

Do Town have an under 3s team?

Juxtaposed to encouraging George to play the game is something equally important: watching.

I'm probably not the best person to be teaching him to kick a ball. I don't play, I'm just no good. I've got sub-Vance Warner feet and the attitude of Des Hamilton. My passion for football is voyeuristic; I'll take scopophilia over blisters, bruises, cramp and mud any day.

We've just chucked out our video recorder so I need to buy the Wembley visits on DVD and we'll see if he will watch them. I see them as a sound investment for baby brother too. Tune in next time to see if I can get him sit still in front of a TV that isn't showing C&L, and we're going to go on a trip to Weelsby Woods with a football; proper plasticy thwacking awaits.

GEORGE'S ATTENTION LEAGUE TABLE
1		Charlie and Lola
2		Mummy
3		C.R.I.S.P.S./C.H.I.P.S.
4		Baby brother
5		Play Dough
6		Stuff
7		Kick!
8		Drawing
9		Cars
10		Football