Full Time: A Soccer Story.

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

Despite the recent growth of the game in North America, and the popularity at the grass roots level, soccer has always been the poor cousin, even viewed as an alien sport. As such, there has been very little written, and no well-known writers to promote or even reflect the sport, as compared to hockey, baseball, football, and basketball. In this sense Alan Twigg’s memoir, Full-Time, is a welcome addition to the almost bare cupboard.

Vancouver-based Twigg is an anomalous figure, being both soccer player and award-winning writer on the B.C. scene. His writings on Central America and Latin America contain references to the primitive football game of the Mayas. This Vancouver kid grew up soccer poor in the 1950s and 1960s, as he recalls in Part 1, “Soccer in Canada,” which describes the development of the universal game, the adventures of the Canadian soccer fan boy, now a man and still playing alongside his over-50 teammates, and their desire to improve their skills. Part 2, “Road to Granada,” reflects the author’s thoughts on the 2006 World Cup, memories of great players of the past (e.g. Stanley Matthews, Puskas, Pele, Maradona), the preparation of the “old boys” for their future games in Spain, the precarious health of several seriously ill players, plus a brief history of soccer in Canada.

Part 3, “Spanish Lessons,” relates their adventures in Granada, their serious attitude to the soccer tour (despite his daughter’s reminder that it is only a fun game), and his thoughts on the Spanish character as reflected in the inhospitable behaviour of their opponents. The grave illness of several players becomes an issue for this ragtag pickup team, as they confront their hostile Spanish opponents who are determined to win at all costs. Some non-soccer readers will probably agree with Twigg’s daughter and wonder why all the fuss about a couple of games. But Twiggs the writer-scholar does take the sport seriously—hence the agonizing and philosophizing about the game, which becomes in a sense a metaphor for life. Himself the victim of a brain tumour, Twigg cites all the old chestnuts about soccer, as quoted by Bill Shankley, when asked why he treated soccer as if it were a matter of life and death. The legendary old Scottish coach replied with a straight face: “Oh, it is much more important than that.”

For soccer fans, especially in Canada, Full-Time will be an interesting and refreshing read. The author knows his stuff, and the book is well written, if at times rather bitty, e.g., the brief history of Canadian soccer and the imagined interview with his fictitious mistress. With so little literature on soccer available in Canada, Alan Twigg’s memoir is a welcome addition to the non-existent canon, enhanced by the important Douglas Gibson imprint, a sure sign of the publisher’s confidence in this entertaining, even thought-provoking, volume.