Forty Winks - by Sven Pertelson

I knew I should have gone straight home from the Stadium. That would have been the sensible thing to do, I suppose. I just had to go and watch the United Kingdom play Denmark in the finals of the 1908 Olympic Football contest, and we won, two nil!.



The new stadium at White City is huge, and the about 8000 of us were like a drop in a bucket as it could take another 60,000. We expected a hard struggle to beat the Danes as last week they beat the French 17 to 1, what a hoot.

The Danes did give us a good game. Early on Chapman from Nottingamshire got one past the Danish goalie who had ended up on all fours in the muddy goal mouth. We thought we had another by Purnell just before half-time but he was ruled offside.

The Danish forwards pressed us hard in the second half and we were glad that Bailey, our goalie, was a safe pair of hands, on a number of occasions. It was about twenty minutes from full time when Woodward, who plays for Spurs, got another past their goalie. Bailey still had some work to do in our goal though and made a magnificent save near the end.

There was a tremendous roar from the home crowd when the whistle blew and that was when I made my mistake. Instead of catching a horse omnibus back to Fulham I decided to celebrate with a pint or two.

I'm not really sure how many pints I did have. I lost count after four, everyone was so happy and they were buying rounds like beer was going out of fashion. It was pretty late when the landlord finally threw us out and the last 'bus has gone. It's a long walk back to Fulham and I decided I'd better not go back to the boarding house. The landlady is a real stinker when it comes to chaps coming in drunk. So, I decided to head straight for work. The night-watchman there is a decent sort and would let me in. That way I'd be sure not to be late for work.

There is a little cubby hole in the carpenter's shop where we store offcuts and brush the shavings until we have enough to make it worthwhile to bag up. That would be just the place for me to catch forty winks before work. Nobody would ever know.

I woke up to the sound of laughing. It was full daylight and my workmates were gathered around me. Even worse there was one of the young lads from the office with his camera. This is not going to end well.