This’ll be the Day that I Die.

Sept 1990. The beach at Santa Monica is an expanse of powdery sand the colour of sunshine and extending to a faraway sea.  The sand drifting loosely between toes makes for demanding going on little legs; a crate of Budweiser pressing into the shoulder exacerbates the situation. 

The beach in front of the Alzado residence is already thick with revellers, the luxury beach-house packed.  Yet, it is the stature of this gathering’s attendees that catches the eye. 

Lyle Alzado, the cousin of a friend of a housemate, a defensive end for the Los Angeles Raiders, a mustachioed mountain of a man, uses Labor Day to provide the perfect pre-season opportunity for professional footballers to reacquaint after the long summer break. Many NFL franchises are represented at the gathering; a final anarchic blast before the billion-dollar business of tearing each other limb from limb recommences.  

Tables are set out on the beach.  We secure a few chairs in the hot sunshine.  An unopened bottle of Absolut appears, is passed between four professional athletes sitting across our table, is drained like water.  A second bottle disappears the same way. A third emerges and is offered across the table.  We’ve not been sat down a minute and the tone for the afternoon is set.

I watched a bit of the American Football when aired in the UK on Channel 4.  I have even tossed a pigskin around a Manchester park.  So, when the sun gives up the high-ground and some bright spark suggests a game of football, I don’t hesitate to raise my hand. But as I invite others from my party to join the impending melee it becomes apparent that there is panic developing amongst almost all non-professionals. 

There is ‘no goddam way’ any of my friends, all frowns and shaking of heads, are going to participate in such madness.  They describe the peril involved in playing with these big boys, especially when drunk; Gareth, especially when they’re this drunk. Pleading for sanity falls vainly on adventurous ears. 

A pre-season game is fierce; points are proved, and men get hurt.  Unsurprisingly, and however much I physically throw myself about, I can’t move anyone or make any indent on the contest. But I remain standing. 

I change tack, employing some psychology at the line of scrimmage, hurling curses and threats across the divide.  I gurn a fierce game-face and to the amusement of all, am tossed across the playing area for almost an hour.  A coup de grâce is eventually delivered as I chase down a long pass. Eyes on the incoming spiral, I sense the tackler’s presence, assume the titan intends being gentle with the infant-size morsel heading his way. Unfortunately, the man is a huge and over-excited drunk, an uncoordinated 300-pound mass of muscle careering across the beach. 

So, imagine a freight train hitting a ping-pong ball; I am crushed instantly yet rebound some distance before crashing face-first into the sand.  There are intakes of breath from around the pitch and along both side-lines.  I am checked for life-signs then carried broken towards my chair to be greeted by general shaking of heads, a volley of I told you sos, and some sympathetic cooing from an unattached blond in a cerise one-piece.

Pointing painfully to a space beside her, I moan, ‘lay me there…’  My nurse sighs and strokes sand gently from my bruised chest.

‘You’re so brave,’ she murmurs.