My Greatest Regret

Like all sane people I am not a fan of regret.  The most that can be said for regret is that it can possibly teach you how to make better decisions in the future.  Particularly silly is the regret that came about through no action of your own.  Disappointment for something over which you had no control is an entirely wasteful emotion.  So naturally my greatest regret is something that was beyond my control.

"Do what you love" is almost universal advice.  There has been only one activity to which I had unstinting love, and that is playing football.  There is lots of evidence that the masters of an activity get to that point by performing the activity for 10,000 hours or more.  Between the ages of 5 and 10 the minimum amount of hours I had played football were, by my calculations, 1,300.  That's an hour a day, five days a week.  I played at every single break at school, in fact I was one of those children who would walk to school while practicing.  I would try to get to and from school without picking up the ball or letting it go into the street.  I loved playing football, it was something of which I never became tired, I just wanted to play and play and play.

I was good at it too, really good.  I played with my school team three years younger than the oldest children (a small seven playing with ten year olds), captained the team a year later and we won our division.  In my last year in primary school I was selected for a district team, a selection of the best players from schools in the area.  A fond memory I have is of playing in a school playground and being on a team that was just much better than the other side, to the point that the opposition were simply being dispirited.  I switched sides and the goals just mounted until we were winning.

I am sure that my parents didn't notice.  At the time English football was a working class pastime surrounded by the risk of violence.  Middle class families didn't spend much time with football, while in England I went to see one football much, England versus Wales at Wembley stadium.  Looking at the records I must have been nine years old (I remember the score was 0-0), but it was quite an intimidating atmosphere.  We didn't watch football on television and I think my mother came and saw one game I played (although I may be confusing that with one of the two of my rugby games she attended.)  There were four children and two full, or more than full, time jobs.  Parents in England didn't attend their child's games at the time.  For them this was just a boy playing.

When I turned ten my parents decided we would move to the countryside, and the school was a rugby playing school.  There were no football teams, no coaching, no playing it in PE.  I continued to play every day in my school uniform on asphalt during breaks and lunch.  At points I was actually not allowed to play by my fellow pupils because my team always won.  At about seventeen my peers became too cool to play during breaks and so my participation waned.  Apart from a brief revival in college, that was pretty much it for me and the game that I loved.

I am certain that with the right circumstances I could have been a professional footballer.  I am not saying that I would have been on the best teams, or even close to them, but I know with the opportunity and coaching I could have made a living playing the game I love.  Perhaps I could have actually been really good, who knows?  I know that without that change of location to a different sort of school I would have had a chance at making my living doing the one thing I have loved more than anything else.