A Tolka Romance by Bill Zunmoon

Chapter 15
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From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success, as Georges Pompidou once remarked to Lionel Ritchie. Shels’ demoralising defeat in Oriel Park, followed by the frustrating goalless draw at home to Waaaaterford, seemed to be the last iced bun that broke the camel’s coffin, but subsequent victories against star-studded Kildare County and the Magic Mons breathed new life into Shels’ promotion charge.
For Lionel, the talk of building for next season had been replaced by the need for Shels to beat Athlone and Wexford. He argued constantly with Zug’s Cousin Genghis over whether Bisto should be brought back into the team for the two matches. Lionel’s point of view was that the aforementioned striker’s presence was vital to the team. Cousin Genghis merely drew his hand across his throat and grinned menacingly which, to Lionel, did not constitute a well-reasoned argument delivered in a cogent and lucid manner.
On the Wednesday evening between Claudia Winkelman and Coronation Street, Zug gave birth to a healthy baby boy. “What is it?” called Lionel over the heads of the goats, who had gathered round to watch the birth. “It’s a baby,” snapped Zug’s grandmother. “What were you expecting, a vaccuum cleaner?”
“I think I will call the baby Geogho,” said Zug, cradling the tiny infant in her arms. “Look at his moustache and the little jink he does when he runs up to take a penalty. You are happy with this, Lionel?”
Lionel could not have been happier. He had heard rumours that mail-order brides do not often work out but here was Zug, producing a son for him only six weeks after they had met. He couldn’t wait to teach the child how to execute a perfect slide tackle while unobtrusively kicking his opponent with his trailing leg. He couldn’t wait to bring him to Tolka and show him how to abuse the opposition players. He couldn’t wait to smack him around the head and tell him not to be leaving those magazines where his mother might find them.
Curiously Zug’s Uncle Reuben, who shared a bed with the happy couple, also took a great shine to the baby and insisted on breast-feeding it during the night. However, Zug assured Lionel that this was the custom in her native Mongolia. Also, she suggested, it would be an advantage to put Reuben’s name down on the birth certificate, purely for tax reasons, to which Lionel acceded willingly.
On the Saturday afternoon of the Athlone match, Lionel was preparing to leave when Zug announced she was not feeling well and would prefer to stay in bed. Full of concern, Lionel offered to stay behind with her but she assured him that Uncle Reuben had already volunteered and that she would not want to spoil his enjoyment of the match.
He kissed her tenderly and loaded up the 93 Sunny. Grandmother took the baby in the back with Cousin Genghis while one of the goats sat in the front seat. The other goats, tethered to a piece of washing line, trotted along behind. Glancing up at the bedroom window, he could see Uncle Reuben standing there in his underpants and idly wondered if he had turned the heating up too high that morning.
The procession started off down the M50, the goats paying their way handsomely by bunching up as they passed the toll plaza, thus concealing the number plate from the camera. They turned off onto the N4, with Grandmother softly singing “When Jayo went to Poland” to the baby and Cousin Genghis amusing it by pretending to decapitate it with his scimitar.
They were just about to branch off onto the N5 when Lionel noticed the blue, flashing lights in his rear view mirror. Well, they were actually behind him, not in his mirror, and by the time Lionel realised this, the car had pulled up alongside and the long arm of the law was telling him to pull over. Being a law-abiding citizen, Lionel did so, though the goat in the passenger seat urged him to make a run for it.
“I was only doing 20mph, officer,” said Lionel, puzzled, as a team of marksmen took up position around the car.
The policeman leaned into the car and spoke through a megaphone. “Step out of the car and lie down on the ground with your hands behind your back!” he yelled, waking the baby.
Slowly, Lionel did as he was told, as did Grandmother and the baby and the goats. Only Cousin Genghis defiantly drew a finger across his throat until a bullet in the thigh put an end to his bravado.
Lionel felt the handcuffs click round his wrist.
“Lionel Snitchie,” shouted the officer through the megaphone. “I am arresting you for the murder of Nigel de Havilland Ponsonby Smythe.”

From Shelsweb

"My favourite moment of the game was when the players for both sides spontaneously decided to play out an interpretive dance routine." - Comment and pic by Pizzapie

A Tolka Romance by Bill Zunmoon

Part 7

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Spring arrived at last in Ireland. The sun came out, admitting in a live TV interview that it had always had feelings for Alpha Centauri, starlings hurriedly completed snag lists for their nests and Shelbourne surged up the table like testosterone rising in a buck rabbit just emerging from four years in Glenstal Abbey.
A veritable goalscoring fest from Freeman, O’Brien, Dunne, Hedderman and Brennan saw the Mighty Reds reach the pinnacle of the First Division in the middle of May as Dundalk struggled with altitude sickness at Camp V, yet Lionel was a troubled man. Amid the euphoria that greeted every goal, he knew that his life was incomplete, as if there was a piece of the jigsaw missing and somebody had hidden it for a laugh. As the great Irish composer Stephen Gateley once said, “Have you tried looking under the settee?”
Of course he knew the reason for his malaise. Karen. The love of his life, the girl of his dreams, twenty one stone of pure woman. He had gone to the Kildare game, hoping to bump into her – not literally of course, as that might have resulted in serious injury – and explain his feelings. He was sure she would understand, providing he spoke in English. But, although he lay in wait by Burdock’s for most of the game, her ample frame was nowhere to be seen.
At the Tuesday night game against Monaghan, he circumnavigated the ground three times before admitting that she wasn’t there. She had always joked that hide-and-go-seek hadn’t been her forte at school, laughing jocosely that many of the other kids had used her as a hiding place. And Lionel knew well that she was no Wally, blending effortlessly into the background like Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora.
On the coach down to Lissywoolen, Lionel brooded over Dundalk’s sneaky Friday night attack on the summit, pushing Shels back down the slope and robbing their chocolate. And he brooded over Karen. He knew she hadn’t gone by Tosh Travel since that embarrassing incident with the coach doors on the way back from Wexford but neither had he heard any mention from AA Roadwatch that a large load was moving slowly down the M5 and that motorists were being advised to continue on the N4 to Edgeworthstown before cutting back.
“Let me tell you ‘bout the way she looked, the way she’d act and the colour of her hair,” he remarked to the bearded guy in the seat next to him, and from Kilbeggan to Moate he poured his heart out to a complete stranger, stopping only when the latter pulled out his earphones and said “Wha’?”
She wasn’t in Athlone at all. Lionel knew this by the absence of a large shadow across the playing surface. He tried to concentrate on the football, marvelling how Sparky, now in his early eighties, still managed to cover every blade of grass on the pitch, except perhaps seven of them near the far corner flag. He roared with the sizable travelling contigent as the net bulged for the opening goal and watched Shels slowly inch back up to the summit, panting at every step.
It was a game of two halves but Nigel only remembered this as he got back onto the dual carriageway. Cursing his forgetfulness he returned to the ground to watch Shels playing into the teeth of a hurricane like Captain Birds Eye lashed to the mast for the second half. The minutes dragged by, limping heavily and with their noses in a sling. The tension was unbearable. Deano looked vulnerable. The normally watertight back four were springing leaks everywhere and there was no Carl van der Velden to stick his fingers in the dyke.
But then it was all over and Shels were back on top and it was Dundalk’s turn to camp on the windy ledge high above the sheer cliff face and hope they didn’t roll over in their sleep. For a moment, Nigel forgot Karen. The relief of victory washed over him like relief washing over somebody and he exited the ground whistling “There’s a whole lotta loving going on in my heart,” by The New Seekers.
And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
Karen.
She was there, leaning lightly against his passenger door, which had buckled alarmingly under the pressure. Panting, as if she had run all the way from St. Mel’s Park, and with rivulets of sweat flowing copiously from her armpits, she idly squeezed the pimples on her chin as she waited for him.