A great story about the tricks your age can play on you. At 44 I sometimes think I am 18 with all of my previous athletic prowess intact. I am reminded quickly on saturday evenings after Tennis and Social or Sundays mornings after volleyball and Waakye. The pain, always a reminder of one's forgetfulness and physical state.
I had what is called an Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury about 15 years ago playing Basketball for the London Polytechnic team, (previously known as Regent Street Polytechnic) the only link was that we trained at the premises of the then London Polytechnic on Harley Street end of Regents Street. It was a club coached by Alan Tillot run by an elderly Saville Row tailor called Harry Errington who was also an European Basketball official. This man travelled around Europe officiating basketball games from the table. Please check link below.
(http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/dec/30/guardianobituaries.firefighters). Harry had a wonderful sense of humor. His always question to me was if I had found a rich widow yet, a question to which I always answered ' No Harry, I am waiting for you to find one first'.
We did not win a lot games but we never lost the fight. Our biggest matches were against the Metropolitan Police either at their Training School in Hendon, North London or at our home court behind Paddington Station. Those battles always ended up with a scuffle or two between some of my white middle class team mates who did not take kindly to being asked 'what Council Estate they came from'. I never took offense to any of this type of heckling planned to keep you off your 'A' game because I did not come a Council Estate neither was I supposed to be part of anything they could brand that was supposed to be lower than they were. Without blowing my own horn I still was able to amass my fare share of points, rebounds, assists and blocks in my usual all action fashion. Ohhh those were the days.
allotey@accralomi.com © Accra, 2013
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