Taking it to the corner, part 2: The Reverse Drake

...and now I'm here

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In hindsight, I probably didn’t watch it live.

The narrative would be better, if I had, but I’m not sure. September 14, 1985, was a Saturday, so it’s possible. Still. Probably not.

The game was on CBC Sports Saturday, my absolute favourite television show as a child (For American readers, it was Canada’s version of ABC’s Wide World of Sports without a terrible ski jumping crash off the start — no agony of defeat for us sweet, innocent Canadians — only with more hockey references). And Sports Saturday was very much into Tape Delay. In fact, I was much older when I finally figured out why the ski races I watched every weekend would somehow manage to only show the top 3 finishes, an American or two, if they did well (Detroit and Buffalo are close, you see), and the 7 Canadians in the race, all in a perfect 30 minutes each week. It always seemed pretty lucky it worked out that way. But, no. Tape Delay.

So I assume they also waited for the results to show this one. Although maybe not.

Regardless, I did watch it. Canada’s 2-1 win over Honduras to qualify to the 1986 World Cup, that is (burying the lead has been a staple of the 24th Minute for the last 19 years, so it’s fitting to do it here too). It was the first Canada game I ever watched. That part of the origin story isn’t made up — it’s too perfect to have been, really.

No, when it came to Canadian soccer, I was the reverse Drake for many years.

I started from the top now I’m…well. It wasn’t a straight line from there, now was it? I also watched the other Honduras game. The one we 8 to talk about. I know I watched that one live because I’m surprised I’m not still hungover from the evening that followed.

More on that, unfortunately, on a later post in this series. Let’s keep this one positive.

How does a kid from Belleville (ok, north of Belleville), Ontario, become soccer-mad, exactly? How does he end up being booked on Indian television stations to talk about Sepp Blatter (true story!) or, insanely and all too briefly, getting paid to ask David Beckham a question?

Like, I’m from Hastings County. Soccer? That’s hockey country and maybe baseball in the summer. Soccer was…not on the agenda. Maybe it is now, a little. I did get stopped in the Quinte Mall once by a kid excited to talk to me about my Mario Balotelli Why Always Me t-shirt, but that was likely a reflection of how rare it was for him to see soccer gear. That was a few years ago now, too, so it’s probably better — lots of kids grew up playing FIFA, even in the H.C. — but those of us in the soccer bubble sometimes don’t realize how, I don’t know, rare we are when compared with the typical Canadian sports fan.

I was downright weird in 1986. If you didn’t have an accent or a last name that ended with an ‘i’ you didn’t watch soccer. Hell, if you called it soccer you didn’t watch soccer.

Except, I did. So, how?

Well, in some ways, it’s a simple story: I like sports. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. Obsessively. All of them. Always have. Don’t really know why. Grandpa, maybe? He took me to a lot of games growing up — hockey, softball, horse racing, whatever was on. I was very close with him, so that is likely a big part of it. Still, dad worked shifts and mom’s favourite hockey player of all time would have been me, such was her lack of interest in the sport. And trust me, I wasn’t worth cheering for. Really weak going to my left. A liability, if I’m being totally honest.

So, I wasn’t getting it from home. We watched Three’s Company on TV and ate popcorn in the 1970s. Any sports watching was driven by me and restricted to Saturday and the previously mentioned Sports Saturday, followed by Hockey Night in Canada, if dad was home and there wasn’t a Burt Reynolds movie on TV.

So, it wasn’t from my parents. Unless you count their support of the passion with the thousands of dollars spent on buying me hockey equipment so I could fall down trying to do backwards crossovers going to the left, Sports Illustrated and The Hockey News subscriptions that I would devour each week, hundreds of books on sports, and, later, a satellite dish so I could watch literally anything that was televised anywhere in North America. So, let’s not cut them out of the picture totally.

I loved that dish. And it truly did play a role in my soccer journey, but that would come later. In 1990, especially. We will come back to that.

There was also the influence of my heritage. I mentioned grandpa above. The other part of that equation was the woman who held down the home front and baked me peanut butter cookies to eat on the way to the games grandpa was taking me to. That would be my grandmother.

Dora was a saint. Been gone 31 years now, but the shine hasn’t dulled. She was the English one in the family, with our Parsons side still having deep roots in Bristol. She kept a house that was full of Britishness — British television programs played, British magazines and newspapers were around the house, the weekly trip to M&S Canada was never missed, so the house was full of British treats.

It’s why, once as an adult, I cleared customs on a layover, just to buy baked cheddars, humbugs, and Jelly Tots (always save the purple ones for last).

It’s when you combine those ingredients — the closeness to my grandparents, grandpa’s chosen way to bond with me, and my imprinting on British culture — that the recipe forms and naturally inclines me towards wanting to follow and interact with British sport. Of those sports, the most accessible was soccer. It wasn’t mainstream, by any means, but it was a lot easier to understand and (sort of) follow than, say, Rugby League. I also got big into track and field for a similar reason, which naturally led to my lifelong obsession with the Olympics, but this isn’t a 5 Rings retrospective. That is relevant to this story in one way, however. I got into watching a lot of sports where Canada was the team I was cheering for. GB, too, but always Canada first. I knew what my passport said, even if I hadn’t used it yet.

Anyway, that’s the background to that day in 1985. When I saw that Sports Saturday was showing a Canada game for the World Cup I was all in. This was right down my alley, in fact. Then, of course, they won and it became the most important game in Canadian soccer history up until, probably, 2021 and then again Sunday.

I had a lot of obsessions back then — still do — but this one really stuck. I mean it really stuck. It became part of my personality. Once I got to high school I found a few others that shared an interest and I finally got to play it as a one dimensional fullback on a laughably naive high school team made up of rural kids who wanted to be on a team but didn’t fancy getting killed playing football. I think we won about 3 games during my four years playing. The Belleville kids having actually played the game before high school put us hicks at a disadvantage.

The thing is winning didn’t matter to me — not while I was playing, nor when I was watching Canada play. Winning wasn’t expected. It just was nice to be part of a sport that mattered everywhere.

If I were to try and psychologically analyze myself to figure out why soccer struck such a cord with me back then, I think it would have to do with that — that it was the word’s sport. Growing up as I did, in a place where Belleville was the big city, I always longed to be part of something bigger — to live and be part of things that resonated and mattered beyond the village.

Soccer spoke to that. It gave me the ability to see the world beyond my physical boundaries. I longed to be a part of it.

But, I wanted to be part of it authentically. Even as a kid, I understood that you didn’t get to choose a national team. You got the one you were born with and maybe the one your parents of grandparents came from (but only as a second team).

So I was a Canada fan (who cheered for England at World Cups if Canada wasn’t playing).

Of course when all this was playing out I didn’t think it would take 30 years to get back to that point, but I was ready to go on a journey.

And, what a journey it was. I think I’ll save the next chapter — the chapter that truly solidified my passion — to part 3. Stay tuned.