Head Games

Contrary to popular belief, I was not dropped on my head as a child. As an adult, however, it's now a different story.

Last night was the final futile effort from my current indoor team. We were clearly in over our head in this league, and then I hurt mine. The moral of this particular story is, if you're trying to draw a foul, do it when the referee is actually looking. And work on your technique so as to avoid whiplash.

Here's what went down. We were down a couple of goals, so I decided to take a turn up top instead of holding down the sweeper position, where I thought I had been pretty good through two periods. Now, when I play forward on an indoor team, I make a point to stand about three or four inches in front of the goalkeeper whenever we start mounting an attack. This was met with a two-handed shove the first couple of times I tried it.

For those of you soccer novices out there, a two-handed shove in the back is generally considered a foul.

Now, being a fairly big guy, I fought through it. Being way behind in the match, I decided this wouldn't do. So the next time I parked out in front, the 'keeper pushed me off, and I went down in a heap. Somehow, I either didn't control my fall very well, or the goalie hit me again, because I wound up flat on my back, and snapped my head onto the hardcourt. I was mad enough about it to want to take a swing at the guy, except for all the stars and the dizziness.

Unfortunately, the play was a little too far away from the goal mouth at the time, and the referee's attentions were elsewhere, so we didn't even get a penalty kick out of the deal.

Let that be a lesson to all the young 'uns out there -- practice your cynical ploys to work the referee or you might get hurt. And technically, it wasn't all that cynical, as I was cleary being fouled.