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Saturday 26 May 2012

Notebook

When kids go out to play football in the park or on the Common - as they do still, as I did for years - they pile their sweaters on the ground to make goal posts and they'll have a goalie and defender against two kids just trying to score goals. Six goals and you change round. There's no midfield build-up, no cover, no possession. You just home in all the time on the goal and the sight of the ball sliding beneath the goalie's dive and splitting the sweaters. That rush is as great as seeing a real goal bulge with the orgasmic bullet and the great devouring roar of acclaim that bursts from the crowd in tiers behind the goal.

Scoring is passion, liberty and exercise. Boys wouldn't play without goals, and the big game needs to remember the sheer lust of professional basketball games, say, where you're scoring all the time and at the end it's 128-127. That's a sport for exultation, whereas 0-0 needs Lithium or liquor.

David Thomson, "4-2".