Full Description
THE DOTS WILL NOT BE JOINED is both a rich, sentimental memoir and a racy 'Compendium of Ideas'. It's about sport (mainly football and cricket) but it carries wise, sometimes cheeky diversions - snapshots into what makes us and what liberates us. The *stories* and the challenges range. Rick Walton is a coach and a writer with a fearless, impossibly positive streak coursing through him. He recounts scary or electrifying visits to football and those wonderfully daft adventures so many of us have had in village teams. Combs forgotten in boots; lacerating North Sea gales; chunks of orange and blissfully sweet tea; 'team talks'. But we also have Proper Coaching - notions around how to approach and nourish and support players. There is the contention, too, that sport really can be 'good'; that how we play can matter. All this in a matrix of arty or philosophical hunches which unashamedly (but also humbly) celebrate the raw, The Human, the ridiculous, the unknowable, the 'unweighted'. Walton's book is a one-off, daring to chase a zillion narratives so as to capture something actually rather profound about how activity works, in a world where the 'Social' and Corporate kaleidoscopes are blurring, bending and maybe even crushing our will.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ix
FOREWORD - by Paul Mason. 1
PREAMBLE. 3
ONE - CONVOLUTION. 5
TWO - YEH BUT IS IT REAL, THOUGH? 9
THREE - SUNSHINE ON LEITH? 20
INTER-CHAPTER - scratch-mix/sub/Maradona. 23
FOUR - DEVIL-ON-MY-SHOULDER. 25
FIVE - STATMAAN! 29
SIX - HOTEL BAGGAGE. 37
SEVEN - WHO WE ARE AND
THE MIGHTY VIC. 43
EIGHT - JASPRIT BUMRAH: "IT'S GOT
TO FEEL LIKE YOU". 49
NINE - OPINION. 55
TEN - UNWEIGHTING. 60
INTER-CHAPTER TWO - METAPHOR. 65
ELEVEN - BAD STUFF IN THE GAME(S). 67
TWELVE - BATTING. 79
THIRTEEN - BOWLING QUICKLY. 86
FOURTEEN - FIELDING POINT. 94
FIFTEEN - A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
(A COMMUNITY COACH). 101
SIXTEEN - PALATE CLEANSER. 118
SEVENTEEN - A KIND OF ECSTASY. 119
EIGHTEEN - THE (BEST TAKE CARE HOW
WE USE THIS WORD) MERCURIAL. 131
NINETEEN - OFF-SPIN. 137
TWENTY - BANTER, BRILLIANCE AND
GENEROSITY: THE COMPANY OF MEN. 144
TWENTY-ONE - "WHERE YOU FROM,
ANYWAY?" 153
TWENTY-TWO - FEMALE HEROES /
HEROINES. 163
TWENTY-THREE - HEROES. 175
TWENTY-FOUR - THINGS I DON'T KNOW. 187
TWENTY-FIVE - THINGS YOU DON'T
KNOW, MOTHERFUCKER. 193
TWENTY-SIX - A DETERMINATION. 198
