Monday, June 2, 2008
Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame
FULL-TIME: A Soccer Story
Alan Twigg, author of Full-Time: A Soccer Story (McClelland & Stewart), presents the jersey that was featured on the book’s cover to Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame representative and Canada Soccer Centre co-founder William Hoyle in Vaughan, Ontario. The book was reviewed in Quill & Quire in May of 2008, prior to its publication. (Photo: M&S.)
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Your book Full-Time reminds me of growing up in Edinburgh.
I can still remember my first professional football match. I was a kid and it took all my pocket money to get into the ground. I couldn't afford the programme so I memorised the teams from the newspaper. Hearts were my team [Duff, Parker, Mackenzie, MacKay, Glidden, Cumming, Sounness, Conn, Bauld, Wardhaugh, Urquhart] but they lost 2-0 to [Aberdeen Martin, Mitchell, Smith, blank, blank, Glen, Leggatt, Yorston, Buckley, Wishart, Hather]. Leggatt on the right wing for Aberdeen that day was the same Graham Leggatt, who used to host the Saturday morning EPL games on TSN.
I managed to squeeze into a space on the terracing beside the tunnel since I was there an hour before the kick-off. Harry Yorston - inside right for Aberdeen - came out to look at the pitch. I didn't know who he was but I asked him for his autograph. He signed, and then asked if I wanted him to get the autographs of the other players. I did, so he took my grubby piece of paper away, and when he trotted out onto the Tynecastle pitch in his strip to start the game some time later he veered over and handed me a programme with all the players' signatures - from both teams - on it.
I thought then, and still think now, that it was an act of great generosity. (Todd Bertuzzi did something similar for my then 15 year old daughter at the MacDonald Hotel in Edmonton when he was playing for the Canucks.)
In those days, growing up in Edinburgh, I was always waiting for the bus. So I always had a tennis ball in my pocket and I'd haul it out at the bus stop and tap it back and forth against the wall. It would come off at angles (stone wall), so you became very good at trapping it with either foot and bringing it under control. One touch stuff. You had to be good because if it went into the street it would be run over and probably burst.
-- Michael Elcock (Victoria, B.C.)
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