Fadó, fadó, back before sport became the axis on which the world spun, there really only existed two seasons where I grew up. There was Gaelic season and there was soccer season. This was a time BTB (Before Tommy Bowe), so there really wasn’t a rugby season to speak of. There was damn little hurling beyond a few gardaí who’d been sent up from down the country, next to no horse racing outside the pub snug lags they spent their time chasing. If there was golf, it was a grown-up’s pursuit, like whiskey or orgies.
No, we had Gaelic and we had soccer and for these perfect few weeks in August and September, we had both. When we all grew up and out, this time of year never lost its pull. More and more sports grew to feel important as more and more games and tournaments flashed across the TV screens. But there’s still something pleasingly kismet about the tailing off of the GAA summer dovetailing with the start of the English soccer season, like Lego clicking into place.
Later, I lived with a Man United fan. He thought he did too. This was in the early 2000s and by that stage I was a sort of a lapsed-Catholic United supporter. Blasé to the point of not particularly caring if they won the league, still interested enough to drill the internet for word on new signings or promising kids coming through.
My flatmate was one of these football fans who never saw a problem that the youth team couldn’t solve. Long into the night he’d lament the fate of some gem he’d come across on Championship Manager who was rotting away in the reserves. Michael Clegg was a particular favourite. Daniel Nardiello another.
In that dweebishly macho way that men try to outdo each other with their command of arcania, Tom Heaton became my name plucked from obscurity. No idea why. Never saw him play, never heard him mentioned. But he was an up-and-coming goalkeeper at a time when United badly needed someone to come on up.
There had been enough Roy Carrolls and Ricardos and Tim Howards at that stage. Fabien Barthez had come and gone. Edwin van der Sar hadn’t arrived yet. Tom Heaton had been the England goalkeeper all the way up at underage so it was easy to surmise that he must be destined for greatness. Or at least it became easy to argue as much with a few on board.
Touching distance
Oh yeah, Tom Heaton was going to be the man. He was the reserve team keeper for the 2004-05 season at just 18 years of age. He played in a pre-season game against
Burnley
10 years ago this week – Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Phil Neville, Mikael Silvestre and Kieran Richardson all played in that game. Heaton only got the last 15 minutes or so but he was there, within touching distance. This time next year, Rodney.
But next year turned into next year turned into lots of next years. Heaton was loaned out to Swindon for a season. To Royal Antwerp for another. Then to Cardiff, to QPR, to Rochdale, to Wycombe. He never played more than 20 games in a season for any of them.
He was still on the books at United all the while, without ever getting a a minute of official playing time. He was Joe Hart’s back-up for the England under-21s.
Strictly speaking, he was a professional footballer. But he was of the game without ever really being in the game. Forever starting over, forever sore and scabbed from the million pinpricks of a sport that kept telling him he wasn’t quite good enough.
Funny how a name sticks in your head, though. Arsenal torched Cardiff in an FA Cup match one year and Tom Heaton was man of the match despite the 4-0 scoreline. Liverpool beat Cardiff on penalties in the 2012 League Cup final but he saved one from Steven Gerrard in the shoot-out. There isn’t a macho dweeb alive who could resist firing off a text to the old flatmate in those circumstances. Tom Heaton!!!
Sport is big and sport is small. The Premier League is a wall of sound and most of the time the thousand little plinks and plonks of players' lives get buried in the noise. Tonight, with however many millions watching around the world, Diego Costa, Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas and the rest of Chelsea's globetrotters will most likely give Burnley a big-boy hiding to remember.
But attempting to ward them off will be Tom Heaton, finally getting to play his first game in England’s top flight at the age of 28. If we watch at all, it won’t be him we’re looking at. And when it’s over, the rest of us will move on to the next shiny thing.
We’ll get our heads around Mayo/Kerry and Dubs/Donegal and a tantalising hurling final and the Ryder Cup and whatever the Heino is called now and the return of the jumps. We’ll do all that and probably never give the Burnley goalkeeper another thought.
But tonight, after a decade of trying with 10 different clubs in five different leagues, Tom Heaton finally makes it to the big dance.
There really is something very cool about this time of year.
