Boys' soccer

One of the unexpected highlights of the trip thus far has been the boys' involvement with the soccer club, AC Santa Lucia. To cut a long story short, through a Monash contact, Mike was put in touch with a guy in Prato who speaks excellent English and who plays soccer. Keeping the story short, our contact hadn't replied to e-mails for a while, so we arrived in Prato knowing only the name of the club - nothing else. We found the club on our map and decided to take a walk there – just to check it out. We had a look around, and then TRIED to ask a few questions in the office. But no-one spoke a word of English (not uncommon outside the main cities). Through sign language, we got the message across that the boys wanted to train and their years of birth. We also mentioned the name of our ‘contact’, which had the desired effect. Then this big guy with grey hair (Fernando) grabs Tom (who isn’t prepared for training and is still jet-lagged), marches him onto the field, screams something to a coach and then pushes Tom towards the coach. Tom ends up playing a practice match and has a ball! He then finds himself in the right place at the right time and scores – which evokes widespread and highly demonstrative displays of physical affection (which as many of you know, is not exactly Tom’s thing!) and shouts of “bravo Tommaso!” Suffice it to say, both boys have been accepted whole-heartedly – although the parents still appear pretty suspicious of us. Of course, Rob and Tom’s training nights don’t coincide (that would be too convenient), so now we’ve travelled half-way around the world only to still be spending four nights a week, 5-7pm, on the side of a &*%$#! football field. But at the end of the day, the boys are having a great time, they’re getting intense social interaction (all the more important given that they’re not going to school), they’re burning off all the carbs they’re eating and as a bonus, they’re getting a high level soccer experience at a very good club. Obviously, sport transcends language/culture and football is indeed the world game.