Wrong colour shirt

Thursday, 05 July 2012

Seven men sat in the pub and six cheered.  Six roared with satisfaction and screamed at the television, giving encouragement to a team that had just scored its third goal.

“Easy.  Easy.”  Their chants expanded the vowels to fill the room as they waited for goal number four to be slotted past an opposition who ran raggedly about like beaten men.  The six men wore their red shirts with pride, announcing to the world their unity but in one corner sat the lone blue shirt.  He remained silent amidst this cacophony of sound and content it seemed to just sip his beer. His attempts to cheer had been snuffed out quite early in the game and he watched as his team was trounced yet again by an all conquering sea of red attackers.

  “We want four.  We want four.”  They’re cries super-glued them together with support for a team that had prospered so many times over the years at the expenses of their rivals, the ‘blues’.  .

“One day, one day,” muttered the young man exiled by his allegiance to the wrong colour shirt and glancing at his watch realised with relief that only a few more minutes remained before his misery would end. 

Not for the first time, just for a moment, he had cause to doubt his choice of colour but then he remembered his promise to a dying Father and realised some things were even more important than football.

Brian Webster, by email.