‘Prosinečki’ takes place in a lower-league football stadium somewhere in Northern England and its narrative duration is very short: it begins during a break in play while one of the narrator’s teammates lies “splayed on the ground amid plumes of vapour and hunkering medics” and ends minutes later, when play has resumed, and the narrator has dinked a cross for his striker to head into the net. Really, though, the story takes place in that expansive non-time which is the domain of great writers and footballers alike, and which its writing perfectly evokes:
I was on the midway line, with my back to goal, and as the ball sped to me through the sleet I feigned right and clipped the ball with the inside of my foot, back across my body and past my left knee. Then, feeling the entire earth rushing over my right shoulder, I span left, and the pitch, the stadium, the lights, the forest cleaved open before me.
The story never makes the analogy explicit – part of what makes it so good is that it speaks only in the language of football – but you can also read ‘Prosinečki’ as a reflection on the development of a writer, who like a footballer, endures years of pain and rejection in pursuit of the brief, transcendent moments when it all comes together.
First published in The Stinging Fly in summer, 2018 and collected in Midfield Dynamo, The Lilliput Press, 2021. Stinging Fly subscribers can read the story here. Non-subscribers can also listen to a great reading by Wendy Erskine here
A Personal Anthology 