England
v Germany, Euro 96.
For
weeks our school had teemed with pride.
Teachers
seemed to smile that little bit more,
and
when we beat Spain on penalties
we wore
our football shirts the next day.
The walls
of our hall pulsated with Three Lions
during
singing assembly, and in the playground
we were
Shearer, we were Gazza,
we were Seaman, Ince and Adams.
My friend
said it was the same at his school,
and
when my dad wore his kit to work
I knew
I was part of something big.
All that
day cars rolled by like tanks,
with
windows open and horns blaring
and
little flags fluttering from aerials.
Strangers
high-fived and hugged in the street.
The whole
country had one heartbeat,
our
lungs balloons of red and white
expanding
with excitement.
The tabloids
said it was World War Three,
and for
ten year old me in my living room
it was
hard to disagree.
The players
sang God Save the Queen
and
people clapped and cheered,
sending
them off into battle.
My mum
and I scanned the faces in the crowd,
hoping
to find my dad.
He’d
gone to the football after work,
and
said I was too young to go.
Mum hid
in the bathroom during the penalties.
She couldn’t
take the tension, she said.
She’d
always hated football, but we both knew
that
this wasn’t really football anymore.
And even
though I knew that it wasn’t really war –
that
our lives would carry on exactly as before –
Gareth
Southgate’s small white flag
hit me
like a caveman’s club.
Dad came
home later telling tales of defeat,
of
discarded flags lying limp in the street;
of
headlines scattered by dejected feet
and
crowds shuffling home in silence.
A few,
he said, tried to stem the tide
by
singing all the old songs one last time,
but it
no longer felt right.
Failure
embraced them like an old mate.
It was
the same in school the next day.
Nobody felt
like going outside at lunch.
“I
cried last night”, boasted Sam.
“Me too”,
said Dan. "And me", said Joel.
Rick
told how he sat with his head in his hands,
in his
St George’s pants and England dressing gown,
wailing
a lion’s tears into his football scarf.
James
said he cried so much he wet himself.
Then we
had a few second’s silence.
