culpability strain

It was hard not to feel culpable yesterday, disappointing in a new way.  We’d been solid and organised for over an hour, my central defensive partner was a robust player I trusted, we’d both had decent games in an evenly contested match which remained goalless.  Then I extended my legs to chase an opposition striker.  Quad muscles stretched and moaned, snagged painfully.  It was the same weakness and set of muscles which forced me off several weeks ago, and which I believed I’d recovered from.  Shortly after I went to ground in a tackle, again overstretching the same set.  And so it incrementally became more painful to run flat out, rather than in one smash.  I could trot about with tolerable pain, but snapping into a sprint to keep with a nippy striker soon became a no-no. 

A cross was whipped in, my man dodged and left me, I physically couldn’t turn and run to get near him - whereas in the first half his small frame posed little threat.  He got on the end of the cross and scored.  A few minutes later a gangly athletic striker collected the ball on the left and went on a run, beat our full back, who I’d tried to arc in behind and cover, failed then found myself swearing in frustration and pain.  The striker outstripped me with ease and popped the ball in the near post.  Two nil.  Having only eleven players, I agreed to move myself to centre forward, where I loped around ineffectively.  For over an hour we’d been a far cry from the team who were so comprehensively demolished last week: compact, organised and able, we moved the ball around ok in the midfield, despite similar impotence up front.  It may sound arrogant to think I was that influential on the goals and the whole game’s outcome.  In this instance though, it seemed the obvious turning point.  The damage was done.

I left straightaway after the game, not even bothering to shower: grouchy and disappointed at the recurring injury and its impact, unlike the flat-out depression which immediately followed the week previous - but which soon turned to a nonchalant, Guinness-fuelled ambivalence.  Yesterday was different.  To be so solid and come quite close, and to feel so responsible after having a strong hour my best of the season.  Not to mention the new fitness doubts.  Could this be the beginning of an ongoing struggle?  Arse.

concessions

Today I spent an unpleasant afternoon at the centre of a football team defence which was comprehensively taken apart.  We lost heavily, with the main protagonist a graceful young black guy who, as well as being outrageously skillful for the level we were playing at, was also sporting and without an ounce of malice or ego.  Everything this guy touched turned to goals.  He sliced an attempted switch pass across the penalty area in the first half, me again a yard off his gazelle-like stride.  It looped over our goalkeeper’s head and into the goal.

It was a horrendous, ghastly, car crash of a performance to cap a crappy week.

In the clubhouse afterwards, watching the England match by virtue of our dodgy access to an Albanian sports channel, I chatted with a team-mate. 

He works at an airport loading and unloading aircraft.  Apropos of nothing, he regaled a story from this morning.  He has colleagues: superiors who aggravate him by being excessively stressed and picky about aspects of the job he feels aren’t worth getting that stressed about.  Yet he stil enjoys good working relationships with them, tolerates them, is professional. 

This morning, however, waiting to clock off with his immediate colleagues, he felt he was in relative safe company, and so he vented.  He said they were jobsworth wankers, only too late alerted to the fact that the obvious subject of his allegation was sitting just a few feet away.  And had heard.  This probably wouldn’t threaten his position, but it was deeply uncomfortable.

I listened, nodded, growing more aware of the parallels to my own week.  Precisely the same thing had happened, just within the nerdy Twitter domain which he probably wouldn’t empathise with, and which would make me appear a geeky prick.

Jobsworth wankers versus gonad crushingly annoying.  Which was worse?  But people do this.  It’s a natural symptom of having colleagues.  Over a career you’ll have some colleagues which will be harder to work with than others, but you will still work with them.  How well you handle it, and if you can restrain yourself from venting or ensure your annoyances aren’t transparent: that makes a difference in your progression. 

Keep your defence tight, make no concessions, go far?