Monkey Post

Lessons learned from playing soccer as a kid

This post is not about monkeys but about Monkey Post, the football game we boys played as kids. And if you were a male kid who lived in Nigeria in my generation, you would know monkey post.

Monkey Post was a game of soccer that was played with an average of 4 members per team. The game was played not on a standard soccer field but usually on sandy patches on the streets, within your compound, your friends’ compound, your father’s parlor or in the corridor of your primary/secondary school.

The captain of each team(one of who owns or borrows the ball from someone else) chooses in turn members of the team and then the team elects a goal keeper. Once the goal keeper has been selected, the whole team decides how many ‘legs’ would make the width of the goal post. The goal keeper( or someone with the largest feet) finds two big rocks. He puts one behind his right foot, then puts the left foot right in front of his left feet, alternating till he counts 5 or maybe 7. Then he puts the second rock before the toes of the final feet. That marks the goal post.

The make-shift pitch was usually about 10 feet in length without any physical boundaries. So when the ball goes outside an imaginary boundary, you can call it a throw-in. Thinking about Monkey post, I am brought to remember the excitement we used to have before, during and sometimes after matches. The adrenalin rush, the spirit of competition, the bruises, the determination and drive to be the winning team, the enemies we would breed within the match and the reconciliation that ensues at the next round. And then everyone in the team was someone else in their own mind. In my mind I was Maradona. In the next person’s mind he was Zidane.

Apart from the lack of boundaries on this pitch, there were no time boundaries. Half time was reached when everyone decided it was time. Full time was decided when everyone was burned out. There were no red cards or yellow cards. You only fell out of the game after a toe injury (where you’d be replaced by someone else hitching for a position on the pitch). There were no referees. There were cheats of course. There were ruffians. There were those who would swear the ball ‘didn’t go out’. But with all of this, what I can now remember was how easy it was to score goals despite the very small goal posts that didn’t have height boundaries; and how goals were scored despite the lack of professional strategy.

How were goals scored so easily with small posts and a keeper manning the post with his entire life? How were goals scored despite the keeper sometimes laying down on the floor across the goal post? Yes, there were times people ‘cheated’. But were there any rules against this?

Today, I looked outside my window to watch young boys play monkey post in the far distance. I could hear their screams of enthusiasm. One team was going to win this match. It wasn’t going to be the strongest team. It wasn’t going to be the fastest team. It was going to be the team who knew how to play against the non-existent rules. It was going to be the team that forgot about defense, damning counter-attacks but the one that goes to strike.

Personally, I am learning to not give a damn about consequences of taking hunched actions. I am forgetting the months I stayed low being scared to take big leaps because I was scared of falling between the cliffs. Oh, how I stayed by my goal post trying my best to defend the loss I have been familiar with just trying to make sure business was as it was yesterday or how I was comfortable with the circle of friends I have now and wouldn’t want to take chances for the future.

I have learned to damn the achievements of the past. They don’t matter as much as what lies in the future. I do not care much about loss in the future too. There wouldn’t be a future if you or I don’t try. No one set the boundaries. No one set any rules. The only rules in the mind of losers are those they have seen on TV while Maradona and Zidane played. But hey, this is Monkey Post and the jersey doesn’t read anybody’s name but yours!