Schoolboy prodigies, forgotten meteors
In two decades in journalism, there was always one genre that I loved the most — that what-if and what-might-have-been stories. It’s sometimes hard to differentiate these, especially in sport, from the hard-luck tales and the stories of talent frittered away. Vinod Kambli, for example, wasn’t really a what-might-have-been story. Even though his career graph went into a tailspin, he still finished with a Test double-hundred in front of his home crowd. If that’s ‘failure’, a lot of us would love to be in his place.
In my early years in journalism, I profiled a teenage Ambati Rayudu, then seen as the batting heir to the golden generation. But while Rayudu’s subsequent career is often cited as a cautionary tale, he too won India caps and excelled for a brief while. That isn’t remotely the same as the talented junior with the world at his feet who then vanishes into the ether.
Football has seen many such stories over the decades. The brilliant George Best and 21 Others chronicles quite a few from the 1960s. Oliver Kay’s heartbreaking Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football’s Lost Genius is the tale of the Irish winger who many at Manchester United thought would be better than Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and David Beckham.
But at least those names are remembered. What of those whose lives aren’t documented in any way, the meteor flashes that time forgot? This morning, while checking on a friend I grew up with in the north of England, we got to talking about kids we went to school with. From some recess in my brain, the name ‘Julian’ suddenly popped up. I couldn’t remember his surname. “Remember the lad in my year who was an amazing footballer?” I asked. “Not seen too many better 12 year olds.”
In nearly four decades of watching sport, I’ve watched thousands of matches and races, either from a few hundred feet away or on television. There are a few that will always be indelible. Barry Sheene in the torrrential rain at Kyalami (TV), the 1986 FA Cup final (TV), Istanbul 2005 (I was there), Eden Gardens 2001 and Mumbai 2011 (privileged to be at both), Bolt’s runs in Berlin 2009 (TV), the Agassi-Ivanisevic final at Wimbledon (1992, on TV), Michael Jordan in Game 6 of the NBA finals against the Utah Jazz…there are many more.
In such august company, it seems almost incongruous that there’s a school football match. It would have been early spring 1986, possibly March, and I can’t even recall who my high school were playing. But it was a Saturday morning, and I got up early enough to make the trek to the school grounds because I knew Julian would be playing. And he was worth sacrificing sleep for.
At half time, most of the fathers on the sidelines were effing and blinding. Several of our players looked dazed. The score was 4–1, to them, and the only person who seemed entirely unaffected was Julian. Even at 12, he looked a bit like a Greek God, and he knew it. On the field, there was a presence about him. He had pace and skill, and an incredible shot, but he also knew how to look after himself. He was one of those kids you just didn’t mess with.
He was also a bit of a thug. His older brother, who had apparently been as talented, had already started to drift towards a life of petty crime, and Julian himself had become quite notorious in our year for breaking the foot of a girl he had been dating. As one of very few brown-skinned kids, I was an easy target for most ‘hard’ cases, but for some reason, he never bullied me. In fact, there were times he went almost out of his way to make sure I was alright. Maybe, being the football geek who watched everything devotedly from the sidelines and made typical Anorak observations helped. I’m not sure to this day.
That second half — if memory serves me right, we played 30 minutes each way — is one I’ll never forget. I’ve seen lots of skillful young footballers, in England, India and elsewhere. Some can dribble like a young Messi. There are others who can shoot cannonballs. Few, however, have the perception of space and time that separates the truly gifted from the rest. Julian had that.
He wasn’t a tippy-tappy player. If anything, he was a young hybrid of Bryan Robson and Graeme Souness. And he was everywhere. One minute, he’d be retrieving the ball outside his own box. A few seconds later, having passed it to the wings, he’s be in space near the other box. They tried to man-mark him but couldn’t get anywhere near him. Too many years have gone by for me to recall if he scored all four goals in that second half, but I do know for certain that he was involved in just about everything. There was one glorious strike from the left side of the penalty area, similar to the one Federico Macheda would score against Aston Villa for Julian’s beloved Manchester United, as they pipped Liverpool to the title in 2008–09.
There’s so much I remember from that morning. The sun being out, the grass finally being free of snow and frost, and the mood on the touchline changing as this not-even-teenage force of nature utterly transformed the game. I still daydream of it to this day, and one of my greatest regrets when we left England later that year was that I couldn’t follow Julian’s progress. I was that convinced that he would make it to the big leagues, if he managed to stay out of trouble.
When I first managed to access the Internet in the mid-1990s, one of the first things I did was search for his name. I was so sure he would be in some squad in England’s top two divisions. That I couldn’t find him was a mystery. It obsessed me for a time, but I gradually forgot about it.
Sadly, Julian never could stay out of trouble. This morning, my friend told me what my 12-year-old eyes had seen those many years ago. Julian did make it, and then he didn’t. At a time when they were a top-division club, he signed professional terms with Oldham Athletic, 30 miles up the road from where he had strutted his stuff for the school team.
He was then thrown out of a stolen car, hitting the railings near the side of the road. Dead at 19, and with next to no trace that he ever existed. All I could find online was a seven-year-old tweet from his brother — who’s been in and out of jail most of his life — saying how much he missed him.
Even those of us with a stable home life and incredible role models mess up often enough. Those with neither, though, are exponentially more likely to get themselves into trouble. I’ll always wonder how things might have worked out for him if the circumstances had been different. What I do know is that a part of me died today when I learned what happened to him.
I guess I’ll always have that half an hour he gifted me.
Originally published at http://dileeppremachandran.wordpress.com on April 13, 2020.