Monday Mornings

My school was football crazy. Actually, let me rephrase that, the kids in my school were football crazy.

The administration and teachers were very much anti-sport. They saw it as a distraction from the absolute main purpose in our lives; getting good grades. Even our PE teacher shared the same opinion! He was a middle-aged man with little interest in sport. He’d often boast to us about he used to play football for the State team, but seemed far more passionate about discipline, the cleanliness of our uniforms and our English teacher. He was a bit of a laughing stock. But then again, when it came to sport, so was our school.

We didn’t have football fields, running tracks, tennis courts or anything of that sort. We had one basketball court that was used for football, volleyball, athletics and badminton. It really makes you wonder as to why all our school teams were so bad.

In my senior year of high school, the entire football team had to write a letter to our principal requesting (see, begging) her to let us go for a big tournament and had to assure her in writing that we wouldn’t compromise on our academics!

You’d think that such an environment would kill our love for the game, but in fact, it did the opposite.Lunch breaks were spent in heated debates over Ronaldo and Messi, time was passed in class by building Dream XI’s and when I look…