From Football to Darts
Just a little story.
I was only 15, only 15, I was too young to know.
But I was on the winning team and we celebrated.
But first things first.

There were two young lads on the team list. I guess today this would be cackled as an Academy. Two young lads of 15 playing football with old men that looked to be, at first sight, past it. Anyway I was one of those young lads at 15 and I was on a high. Playing for my home town ( under 16s) we had kept Frankfurt to a draw of 1-1. That was a big deal. Thought myself to be a hero. But that was the youth team. I was getting grilled into an adult team and just to look at them hurt.

Back to training. The old-fart centre-half began tackling me. He wanted me to learn how to keep my legs intact. But he spared no force. Anyway I was selected for my first big game with the adults. Shit that was the first time that i had ever followed orders and shit I was nervous. This adult team gave me hell. I just wanted to play football. No more the youth team here. ..... but I wanted the hero....
Then I began to learn a bit and a piece.

The big boys had helped me survive many months of hell and heaven and they had carried me through ( I was learning?) and our last game was a kind of crunch and punch and no holds barred type of thing. I got my nose broken but we won the game.

Celebrations. Weekend night. Visit to pub first and then posh dinner. I was already out of my depth. At the pub we played darts against some local team ( no idea of the real facts) and our football team were giving me hell again as I was nervous to even be in that pub at 15. I was the guy that needed a double to win against the locals. I thought everybody was as pissed as pissed as can be because I could hardly understand a word they were all saying. I threw the dart. Double 20. In one dart. Then I got lifted up and thrown and tossed around until I was really made to understand the significance of this double 20 throw. The beers were paid for by the local pub and there were many of us. Even the magic sponges and the administration lot were there. Now I was a hero. Luck and fate works that way sometimes. Sometimes. All gets blurred.

Pub was closed and the restaurant open. It was one of those places that would accept drunken football players at that time. It was Greek.
All of a sudden I was asked to order.
Deliver de liver I demanded as the adults laughed and the waiter glared.
Then I was told to behave myself by the big centre-half of the team.

All this is just sentimental sentencing of the experience, anchored and recorded. All this is cods! But true.
What can be said and done?

Darts is a game that is played on the margins. The end is always on the margins.
The centre is sometimes ok too but the margins is really where it is at.
The margins.
That is why I remain happy with the outside.
That is why I remain enthused with the borders.
That is why I have still so very much to learn.

I really do miss that old centre-half yelling at me to keep a line.
I miss the whole team as a fifteen year old would. But I am not 15.
I remember that it was the Centre-half that guided me into another level of football, the same man that yelled and knocked me about. The same man that, with a much balding head later said "Hello, remember me?".
I did.
How can a centre help the margins? Do you really need to ask?