Fordyce Maxwell: 'The injury reminded me the spirit might be willing but the flesh is weaker'

Published on Saturday 28 March 2009 18:42

BAD news from the front and a blow to Berwick Rangers' hopes of strengthening their squad for a determined late-season attempt to climb from ninth to eighth in Division Three: I have a knee injury. Aficionados of our wonderful national game – dear oh dear, you have to laugh – will realise that from ninth to eighth is another way of saying an effort to rise from second bottom to third bottom of the lowest professional division in Scotland.

That was why in the closing stages of last week's home game against Elgin – second bottom against bottom, and I'd better move right along before the urge to use another word for 'bottom' more likely to be heard on the terraces becomes overwhelming – I was advised to look out my boots for the next game.

The press box gang were only joshing, of course. Some of them are old enough to have seen me play and the boots went to a charity shop long ago, my offer to autograph them as a unique selling point politely declined, and I mention it only as an example of the gallows humour found among fans of struggling teams. Then, football being the emotional rollercoaster it is, our brave lads scored a splendid 89th-minute winner and the request for my services was forgotten.

Just as well, as what was then only a twinge in my right knee became increasingly troublesome over the next few days and I became tetchy and petulant enough to slot unnoticed into a Manchester United side.

What annoyed me most, apart from the dot-and-carry hobble, was how the injury had happened. It was the knee I damaged in an ill-advised attempt at a cricket comeback six years ago, but that had healed after three months or so, about the same time that friends stopped laughing.

I still think the catch was worth the pain, but accept that there remains a difference of opinion within the family on that even after we agreed, on one side, a ban on any sentence containing the words "more, had, your age, at" and "sense" and, on the other, a ban on putting fingers in ears and going "La, la, la".

Now it seemed the injury had returned to remind me that the spirit might remain willing but the flesh is a little weaker than it was, especially when climbing ladders. A day spent Cuprinol-ing the shed and the summerhouse, that was the answer; much of that time up, down and on a ladder, balancing tin and brush in the inimitable fashion of the enthusiastic amateur, exercising my gift of being able to paint equally badly with right or left hand.

Curse you, warm spring day, for enticing me out there to inspect the bare patches starting to appear on the summerhouse side most exposed to north-east wind and rain, the fading sage-green of window ledges, spiders' webs in corners and crannies, a small leak in one corner of the roof needing attention.

Once started with scrubbing brush, sandpaper and then Cuprinol on a fine warm day there's no stopping me, as the final state of my painting jeans and trainers can testify. Not forgetting the swelling of my right knee. But I hope to be fit for the start of next season's promotion push.