"I challenge you take one post". If you grew up in South Eastern Nigeria and you as much as played any form of football as a kid, the above won't sound strange to you. First of all, it's not just anybody that is involved in that initial process of selecting players for the various sides. It's either the best players or the owner of the ball. The later, is however higher in ranking than the former. The selection process cannot exclude the owner of the ball otherwise the selected players will make do with playing stones instead of football. He is a small god. If he hates you for any reason, forget it. You won't play. I don't know if it's coincidence but 80% of ball owner were not good ballers. And mostly very fat.
On several occasions my mother will send me on an errand to buy something for her at the market. Maybe pepper, onions or whatever. We lived in a part of the University community close to an apiam way to the market. Some group of boys normally play the rubber coloured ball popularly called felele because of its producer given ability to follow the wind wherever it pleases. Once I get there and they have started playing, au revoir to the pepper I was asked to go and buy. I will join a side and then...game on! Once I hear women chattering and look up to see market women passing by from the direction of the market, it dawns on me that I have goofed. Again. Market don close! I'll grab my slippers and polythene bag, touch my pocket to ensure the money is still there and zoom off without telling a word to my playing mates. And of course, market has closed. No where to buy anything from. From the market to our house normally takes between eight and ten minutes walk. But on such days, thirty minutes I never reash house. I get home and go to the back of the house and listen in on my mother's gist to know when it is convenient to enter the house. However, any time I choose to enter the house, I go collect beta beating. My mother's magic entails cooking the food with the NO pepper from me but the food will still have adequate pepper. Victoria Magic.
I was born in the University town of Nsukka. Quiet and peaceful town. Growing up, we used every available thing as football. Oranges, polythene bags tied with strings into an almost circular shape and even unripe mangoes served. We played everywhere we found an enabling space. I loved going on holidays to Enugu. The major reason was football. In Enugu, my grandmother didn't mind me playing football from morning till night. Or better put, from morning till whenever hunger strikes. In Enugu, nobody bothered me about studying. In Nsukka, studying was the principal thing. Playing football in Enugu was much different from playing in Nsukka. There were a greater number of excellent players in Enugu. Malaika, Mampo, Buddha, Arinze were my mates whom I played with there. Good ballers. Mampo was very good then. Little wonder he went on to play for the Super Eagles. Competition was higher as against Nsukka, especially in the campus where most of my mates preferred playing video games to playing real football. That accounted for why I had more friends off campus than inside the campus. Chidubem Obio, Osinachi Enekwe, Chukwuemeka Okoli, Uchenna Igbo (blessed memory) and Chike Nwaozuzu were few of my friends who were interested in football and lived on campus. The rest were off campus, that's why I spent more of my outside school active hours off campus than on campus. Central School Odenigbo was our San Siro. The field was hard ground. Rock solid, with little patches of grass on one end. It was however better you fall on the hard surface than your fall on the grass. Dat grass na barb wire. God bless that field and the school that houses it. In Enugu, we played on tarred roads mostly. But at other times, we went up to St. Peters field, Eke Street, Coal Camp tonplay. One could go out to play in the morning and return in the evening with his two big toes open and bleeding. Painful, but doesn't stop him from going out again to play the very next morning! We loved football. In Enugu, nobody was interested in video games. We preferred the real deal. The game outside.
Following my father to the village occasionally was fun too. I get to play with friends there. We played on sand. There,after playing, you go back to your house in the evening looking like willie willie. White all over. My father, like my grandmother, didn't mind. For him, so long as my academics weren't suffering, he didn't mind. Being an academic person himself, his disposition towards me and football was surprising to my siblings. For my mother, studying is never enough. She kept me on my toes. Having academically very sharp sisters didn't help me one bit. My brother? I dreaded his coming home. Whenever I hear he is coming home I get depressed automatically. I quickly come up with a time table. Growing up, I didn't like him. He was a barrier between me and my first love, football. I remember learning BODMAS with tears. That guy was good with the cane mehn 😅😅😅.
In my University years, we had a team of football machi. Baggio, Odenyi, Plc, Ekete, Orjiakor and Agashi were some of my relaible mercenary team mates. We crossed the length and breath of Southern Nigeria playing as football mercenaries for one team/town or the other. For the money and the fun too. We never lost a game we went as mercenaries. We were business minded ballers. Money was the motivation. Leave am, we dey deliver. Academics? Akanu Ibiam Stadium is very close to my faculty, the Faculty of Arts. On many occasions, I asked to be substituted from games thirty minutes before an exam and I head to the examination hall straight from the field! 😅😅😅😂
I watched Rangers, Stores, Iwuanyanwu National, Julius Berger and Co play in Nnamdi Azikiwe stadium. I grew in to the game. My seniors like Kalusha, Kabongo, Owen, Gboko, Rocky, Uyo, Uzo, Chike + Ogonna and Aja all played roles in endearing me to the game. God bless them wella.
I went to Enugu some time ago and in the evening the streets were empty. Children were all indoors playing video games. I went to Toscana same night and saw many 'children' swallowing Orijin. They drink more than my generation and my father's generation put together. They don't like football.
Biko I have always asked; people who don't like football, what do they like?
Leave am, I grew up well.
Photo credit: apesoughird.wordpress.com
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