I cried tears on the hearth at the broadcast that afternoon in Yambuk when the lanky Irishman undid us all.
And my eyes dried up thereafter.
Not since have I been able to get up a tear. Finished, it did me in. One time I banged my finger with a hammer. Not a drop. Swore; no tears though. People have died; nothing. Sad movies? Maybe a gulp. Grandchildren come? Moist – at most. I can’t spell Buckenara without thinking ‘F’. Stynes? Sty. (Granted, they named a bridge after him for what he did later. Fair enough. Good job, Jim).
What do you say to a grown man who can’t cry because a skinny, Irish immigrant decided to run in front of a fellow who had a free kick a third of a century ago?
15 metres it was. 15 lousy metres.
The music might have died the day Buddy and the Bopper came down but there, that day, lives were ruined, hopes dashed, golf and croquet contemplated.
A Preliminary loss might normally rate a leg or right arm. But that one? Life.
All possible future emotional investment evaporated right there. No more could I hope. No more would there be a bit of a barrack, a ‘Go Dees’. Nuh. You could have all gone to root your boots as far as I was concerned.
I went and watched concrete.
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