The beautiful game and all she does for us

The Portuguese were the worst. Frantic, hyper and oozing machismo, they presented the most difficult proposition of all the ethnic combinations a team was likely to face in the Supersport corporate soccer league.
They weren’t the best team. This season that would be Hollard – a team of mostly coloured guys, for some reason. The hip, dreadlocked black guys of YFM were pretty good too, but they tended to err on the side of midfield wizardry at the expense of goal-scoring.
But those Porras were hardcore. Lusito, they called themselves. Lusito FC. Just about every Lusito game there was a fight. The one game even had to be suspended while players chased each other into the parking lot, tuning each other poes and waving their fists.
They were talented footballers too. They played a direct, passing game, and their wings were 22, aggro and fast as blazes. Their goalie was this bald, fat oke, who liked to try scare you off the ball by screaming his head off at you.
Compared to them, Louis’s team were a bunch of pansies. Incompetent pansies, even if they went by a seemingly auspicious name. The Sandton Personal Training Gym seven-a-side team had lost all six of their games this season.
And this Monday was Sandton PTG’s game against Lusito. It was sure to be a massacre, but that didn’t bother Louis.
What did bother him was that he’d somehow ended up inviting the woman he’d been perving for years to come and watch the massacre.
He’d been making furtive eye contact with soap star Gillian Bogle ever since he’d started using the gym. Last weekend, she’d arrived with a brand-new haircut, in a new outfit and suddenly started a conversation with him.
This after two years of not a word passing between them. It was as if she’d suddenly decided to get to know him. Like she needed a new circle of friends. Maybe she’d embarrassed herself in front of her previous group of mates.
Anyway, he’d gone to gym in his soccer shirt, and she’d asked whether he played. He said sure, Monday nights. She said she’d like to come watch and he’d said well why not come along next week.
And so it was sealed.
Gillian showed up 15 minutes before kickoff at 6pm, in her PTG T-shirt and a pair of tight, black leggings. Every inch the seven-a-side cheerleader.
The problem was that Louis was not only guaranteed to lose, he was also by far the most timid member of the PTG team.
But fate has an odd way of turning our apparent handicaps in our favour.
For instance, on Monday night, late in the second half, with PTG trailing 6-0, a curious thing happened.
Coming on to substitute for Butch, Louis found himself in the unaccustomed position of striker for this first time in his life.
There being no offside rule in seven-a-side, and with Louis loitering hopefully near the Lusito goal, he soon found himself on the end of a high, bouncing kick upfield.
Louis ended up in a goalmouth scrap with the Lusito goalie, who predictably tried his usual tactic of bellowing like a castrated ox.
Louis instinctively cowered, lost his footing and fell flat on his bum. But in doing so, he managed to inadvertently nudge the ball past the keeper with his left knee.
It was the final goal of the match.
As PTG trotted back to where their bags were behind the goals on the McDonalds side of the field, Gillian planted a tender kiss of congratulations on Louis’s nose.
She even joined the team for post-game drinks.
Butch didn’t come, though. Him and Gillian have a history.
For the rest of the season, Gillian religiously attended the gym team’s football games, and even witnessed their narrow 3-2 loss to Hollard.
She attended the PTG end-of-year dinner at Su-Da-Da on Louis’s arm and everybody had a whale of a time.
It’s not like Gillian and Louis ever became romantically involved. Things soon cooled between them, and they ended up little more than email friends.
But they shared a few weeks of fun evenings on the football fields at Sandown High – there across road from McDonalds. And Louis got to meet the lady he’d been admiring from afar for years.
And football provided the pretext for their first meeting. That’s the good thing about football. It brings people together.