
1 Goalkeeper
for my father Popke Hoekstra
The Goalkeeper is a vital chain for the safety and defence of our temple. The closure of our team, the safetylock on our Gate to Heaven is he the Keeper of the Flame, the Guardian on the line and every so often the flying goalie that flies out and plays his role as our Last Man inour defence, just as Johan Cruyff always loved to see him acting. The goalie is the Keeper to safeguard our Holy Goal. A soldier man with an attractive target for the opponent to achieve a scoring record : shoot and score for a higher purpose being the Win, the Nike, the Triumph and the Victory.
Look ! : A Keeper flying across his goal! I must have been at the age of 6 or 7 years and I was there, seconding on Sunday afternoons my father Popke Hoekstra in the Alkmaarder Hout (“De Hout”) where the profclub Alkmaar ’54 had its football stadium ….. for a nickle and a dyme in my fathers’closed hand reaching out to “Mister” Usher at the galleries’ doorgate. (“For the little boy something for you”, I heard my father mutter and he always succeeded to smuggle me through to sit with him out there on the gallery, between his long lean legs with a shadow of a push in my back to do it all swift and handy).
Then that day the show was stolen in the field by one Gerrit Snabilie, the most handsome looking goalie of the newly started professional football league in decent Holland after the 1953 Dykebreak and Flood Catastrophe benefit football match, that Dutch mercenary professionals playing abroad in more advanced competitions in Europe had miraculously won by beating the National Team of France : 1-2 by left winger Bertus den Harder in the stadium of Reims.
Gerrit Snabilie was transfered from Black Sheep Amsterdam (one of the other law-breaking professionally payed clubteams) was the goalkeeper of Alkmaar ’54 to be celebrated here and now by his swift sense of reaction as a Line-keeper : for that purpose this Gerrit, a wonderboy with women mind you ! was royally paid for haha yaya dada !
Look, I still see Gerrit Snabilie hover up to the leftupper corner to check the diagonal shot in extended flight ……. as the ball now gets diverted from its straight track by the head of full back Peggeman and changes direction, piercing through the middle of the Alkmaar goal. But in a miraculous reflex the keeper knows how to kick the ball out with his right foot.
And each and every one in Alkmaar that had the honour to be present, stands upright as one man on the galleries for a standing ovation and hihaho-hilarity for so much coolness :
a god in his own right I see here hovering through his holy goal with rare artistic talent served out by Gerrit Snabilie, if anything by this performance a good and spectacular keeper for the show !
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