When I was in school, I grew faster than most of the other boys so I was considered a "big lad".  I was even bigger than the principal, Brother Marcellus, and the rest of the boys thought I would be a useful weapon against him if ever he got out of hand and tried to impose some discipline.  I won much respect from my "nibbing" ability.  Yes, I am proud to say that I was champion nibber of Saint Francis Boys School for most of my senior years there.  Nibbing was a lunch time activity that involved whipping your knuckles down along the spine of your opponent in an attempt to make him scream.  Then the situation was reversed and your opponent got an opportunity to nibb you.  Whoever screamed the least was deemed the winner and proceeded to the next round.  I could nibb like nothing on earth and would refuse to scream for anybody, so I always won the competition out.  On one occasion I did a "Nibbing Challenge" when 8 opponents attempted to "group nibb" me.  It brought a tear to my eye, but I refused to scream and thought instead of the almighty nibbs I was going to give when it came to my turn.  The feeling of power as I ran my knuckles slowly along their quivering spines during my "practise swing" was tremendously rewarding and worth every bruise on my back.

But this was where my sporting prowess ended.  Being a big lad, I would have been  ideal for midfield on the football team.  Bit I exasperated the Christian Brothers with my lack of ability.  I was always terrible at football.  The teachers were continually coming up and patting me on the shoulder and asking me out to training.  One day I did go, because I knew if they saw me "perform" they would shut up and leave me to work on my nibbing technique.

This particular training session started in a kick around, when I was placed marking Francis Cornally.  It was about half my height, so he should have not seen the ball once.  I remember the ball being passed towards me from the left wing.  I took a quick look for Francis, and saw him disappear out of sight behind me.  He obviously wasn't up to the challenge of a man mountain like myself.  I always got terribly nervous during the few seconds before attempting to make a catch.  I suppose it was more excitement than nervousness.  Who wouldn't be excited at being presented an opportunity to make their first successful catch? With people looking!

During these seconds, everything slowed down and everything except the large round object floating towards me disappeared from sight.  The ball, as it approached me, would grow and grow in size until it was as big as a planet and impossible not to catch.  I'm convinced that on some of these occasions of slowed down time, I could hear as I ran the same noises as The 6 Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin, used to make as he ran.  It was terribly distracting.  It may have been my imagination though.  Anyway, each time that I was just about to go for the kill, time returned to its normal pace, and may indeed have tried to make up for what it lost by going slightly faster, and the ball planet would zip past me and my flailing hands.  I would invariably make a clapping noise as the palms of my hands smacked together due to a lack of leather to keep them apart.  Unfortunately I was the only one clapping,  as Francis Cornally ran up the field unopposed to score the winning goal.

After the kick around, we went to "skill practise".  This involved repeating skills like tackling and soloing.  I found soloing very taxing.  You had to solo the ball every 4 steps and it basically involves kicking the ball to yourself.  The measure of a good solo is efficiency and speed and it should not, as was the case with me, cause you to have to diverge from your goalward route.  Much as I wanted to make a determined and penetrating soloing run up the centre of the field, I always ended up running in random directions, but mostly backwards, with my arms out ready to catch a completely overhit "solo".  Apparantly I used to run with my tongue hanging out also, in the manner of a dog chasing a stick, and I constantly had my eyes focussed upwards leaving me very prone to a fall over the simplest obstacle or a collision with the goalpost.  Or indeed with Brother Marcellus, but I'd prefer not to talk about that.  So, as we have already discussed my catching ability, you can imagine my demonstration of "skill practise" was not a particularily beautiful sight. 

The only time I managed to solo properly was while wearing wellies getting the cows in.  I figured that I could use the football in place of a stick to urge the cows on.  But I found that, thanks to the remarkably curved nature of the instep of a plain wellington boot, I could perform a well controlled solo.  They also did wonders for my shooting skill as I could hit lazy cows from about 30 yards right on the nose.  They hindered my running though as each step was impeeded by knee high welly rubber and accompanied with floop-floop noises.  I reckon the likes of Nike and Adidas could learn a lot about footbal boot design by studying wellies and I would not be surprised if a hybrid wellie-football boot was soon on the shelves and adorning the feet of the worlds top footballers.

In actual fact, this might be the beginning of a completely new sport.  Instead of "One man and his Dog" herding sheep into a pen in the middle of a field, we could have "One man and his Football" herding cows into a milking parlour by terrorising them with his football.  We could call it Milkball.  I reckon it would be a runner financially too as you could get loads of sponsor ship deals from sellers of dairy products and Home Farm could be the main venue. Players would have to watch out for cramp in their calves though and the ref would have to ensure there was no horseplay.  I might even be talked into making a come back, if my wellies still fit me.