Dolls with Balls

By Trevor Johnston

Will Sheila get Harry to the altar?

Will Harry lose the football match to avoid marrying Sheila?

Can Anne Marie Drummond get a good Irish Catholic girl for her son Sean?

Can Sean get the sexy non Catholic Payne into bed without Anne Marie finding out?

Will the girls take control of the football club and get the players fit for rugby and bedroom!

All these questions and many more will be answered in Dolls with Balls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467892452

Trevor Johnston

Trevor has been writing for media and publications for over 25 years. He has a special interest in sport and has been a regular contributor to Emerald Rugby magazine where is humorous musings have gathered a large following.

Book preview

Chapter 1. 

The ball tu mbled end to end into the trees below the bottom goals. The watching youngsters rushed one after another into the undergrowth in pursuit of it. Meanwhile the referee whistled for full time and thirty tired, wet and muddy rugby players trooped off the pitch.

It had been a nice soft Irish day. Plenty of sweat had been expended but sure it worked up a thirst for the players.

Mike Turner, the Elvin captain stood on the touch-line, waiting for the rest of his team to join him. Mike was a big man. He stood at just fractionally over six feet four and weighed in at sixteen and a half stone. There was not a pinch of fat on him. He worked in the local Council Office. This was a desk bound job but he made up for it through plenty of exercise. Mike’s father had dropped dead of a massive coronary (does anyone ever get a small coronary?) at 46 years of age.

This had preyed on his mind for years and made him adopt a strenuous exercise regime. He trained two times each week with the rugby team, swam on two other nights. On one other evening, he accompanied his wife June to the local gym.

Mike divided his fourteen team mates into two straggly lines outside the club-house to await the opposing Killymoran team and clap them off the pitch in typical rugby fashion. The referee then passed through the two lines and was clapped.

OK, he had been crap for both teams but at least he had given up his Saturday to supervise the match. He was deserving of praise. Some of the players would have disagreed, especially Sean Drummond.

Sean who was the local undertaker, had fallen foul of the referee during the match for raking one of the opposing forwards with his studs. Sean would normally have enjoyed the rest that a Yellow card and10 minutes in the sin bin afforded him. But this was a league match and Killymoran had scored what turned out to be the winning try when Sean was cooling his heels on the touch-line.

And how in God’s name could you rake an opposing player with your studs when you hardly had a stud left on your boots? You would have found more tread on a condom than on his boots.

Sean followed the referee and his colleagues through the throng of Killymoran players who were now applauding the Elvin players into the dressing room. They slumped onto the muddy bench and listened to the players raise the rafters in celebration in the adjoining changing room.

The Wild West Show and other dirty rugby ditties rang out as the boys whooped it up.

It was times like this that Sean missed the cigarettes. He had given them up two years ago but still took the occasional pull; especially when he was having a pint or under stress.

He searched through the medical box. There was not a cigarette to be found. Sean swore out loud at Club Chairman, Charlie Coleman, who was doubling up as the medical orderly for the day.

‘Jesus, Charlie. What sort of medical kit is this? Not a single fecking fag in the box. There’s not even a drop of booze in it. In fact there’s not even any liniment or rub in it’.

‘The liniment was stolen’, said Charlie.

‘I left the kit in the car, down on the square on Thursday. I forgot to lock it and I think Aloysius got into the car and drank the stuff.’

Aloysius was a well known drunk who hung around the town.

‘My God’ cried Sean.

‘I’ll be burying Aloysius, one of these days.’

The Elvin team sat heads slumped and dejected.

The only player showing any sign of emotion was Eamon Friel who sat singing to himself in the corner. Big, broad shouldered, Eamon with a crop of red hair and a temper to match. Eamon would split you in two on the rugby field. It was hard to believe that the same Eamon was the local Pastor in the Evangelical Church.

He sat on the bench singing to himself. It was his way of chilling out after a game.

‘Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life

End over end neither left nor to right

Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights

Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.’

The same, Eamon would be well able to drop kick you through goal posts whether real or imaginary.

Sean thought to himself, how he hated that fecking song. In fact he hated every song or hymn that Eamon sang. But you do not argue with eighteen stone of solid muscle.

Sean’s attention moved to Mike Turner who had stirred himself.

Mike rose to his feet and bellowed.

‘Right boys. You we’re shite today. But why does that not surprise me? Because you’ve been shite every Saturday since the season started.

Do you know something lads? I was down here at training last Tuesday and Thursday night. Apart from Sean Drummond and Harry Hermon there wasn’t one other Fourths’ player at training. And I firmly believe that Sean and Harry were only there because I lifted them on the way down. I know that this is the Fourths and we’re not going to win no national leagues or anything like that but you were shite today, you’ll be shite next Saturday and shite every week until the end of the season. That is unless you get up off your fat arses and do a bit of training. I’m not looking to turn you in to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. Mind you the nearest you lot will get to looking like film stars is Laurel and Hardy.’

‘They’re dead’ chirped in Harry Hermon.

‘There’s still more fecking life in them, than there is in you lot.

I tell you one thing lads. Unless you get the finger out you’ll not be seeing me leading you out on the pitch much longer’.

‘Take it easy, Mike’ said a chilled out Miles Maguire who had played in the front row.

Miles was busily rolling a cigarette.

‘Do you see that cigarette you are busy rolling,’ said Mike.

‘I would be surprised, if you had the wind, to pull on it. I’m not picking on you especially, Miles. But the fact is that the only difference between this team and my septic tank is that my septic tank is only half full of shite. I’ll repeat myself. Unless there is a wee bit of interest in the team, a wee bit of effort, then I’m going to chuck it in. Let some other eejit look after the team. There you are lads.’

With that, Mike peeled off his muddy No 8 jersey, tossed it into the laundry basket and marched off into the showers. There was a stony silence as the other fourteen players digested Mike’s speech. What they could not understand was that it was so untypical of him to burst out like that. Usually it was hard to get much chat out of Mike. Harry Hermon used to joke that you could have a better conversation with a Trappist monk than you could have with Mike Turner. It was Sean Drummond that broke the silence.

‘Lads. I was crap today and I’m sorry for getting sin-binned in the second half and costing you the match. But do you know something. I may have been crap but I got around the pitch for most of the match. Some of you wouldn’t get round the pitch in a taxi. Look, Mike Turner has put 20 years into this club. He has sweated blood and tears for it. Could we not pour out a wee bit of sweat for him on a Tuesday or a Thursday? I don’t think he is expecting you down both nights. If we could all, including myself, get a wee bit fitter we’d enjoy the game a lot more. Who knows, with a wee bit of fitness you might be able to please the girlfriend a bit more and maybe fit into them pair of jeans you have stored in the back of the wardrobe for the last eighteen months. We’ll say no more about it but let’s try and give Mike a bit more commitment in the weeks ahead.’

‘Hear, hear.’ Cried Harry Hermon.

‘Fair play to you.’ Shouted full back Jinksy Meehan who had played at a much higher level in the club and knew the benefits of being fit. As for the rest of the team, some nodded in agreement. Others shrugged their shoulders.

Meehan had been called Jinksy for so many years that many people did not know his real name. He thanked God for that. His parents, when they were alive had been great cinema fans and named their children after their big screen stars. Jinksy had brothers called Humphrey and Cagney. It was only on the third date with his wife Helen that Jinksy was able to tell her that he was named after a cowboy. Yes! Wayne Meehan was his real name. But Jinksy felt even sorrier for his poor sister who had ended up with the unfortunate name of Lassie Meehan. No wonder she ended up joining the Sisters of Mercy where at least she could now hide behind the title of Sister Bernadette.

For many of the Elvin rugby team, the old Irish values of grassroots rugby still held firm. You played for enjoyment. The result was incidental. As long as everyone got rat-arsed afterwards. That was the important thing. Sean Drummond knew that it would be difficult to change the players’ attitudes. Many of them harped back to the days of old when the only reason why a player was dropped from the team was because he left the bar before closing time on the Friday night.

But the times were changing and the players would have to change with them if they expected men like Mike Turner to stay with them. Mike returned from his shower, dried himself quickly and put on his clothes.

‘Right boys’, he roared to no one in particular.

‘Remember. There’s training next week. I’m off home. I can’t hang on this evening.

As Mike drove down the streets of Elvin, he thanked God that planners had not been around when the place started to take shape. There was a certain irony about the design; an inland town nestled among the hills in the middle of Ireland. A town of some 1500 people that was situated off the main routes. An area without industry but with a strong rich rural hinterland. If you wanted to shop or do business you went to nearby Galston. If you wanted to lead a more relaxed or more social lifestyle, you lived in Elvin.

Life and even death in Elvin, like so many other small towns, evolved around the centre of the town. In the square the Castle Inn Public House sat in the shadow of the Roman Catholic Church. To the other side of the Church, stood Rogers Bookmakers. Very often a drinker would leave the Castle Inn, drop into the Church for a quick prayer and then move on to the bookies to place a bet. Mike suspected that the church prayers were more usually slanted towards a plea for Divine Intervention in the 3.30 race at Kempton Park rather than any Heavenly plea for forgiveness. The Church dominated this side of the square and was directly opposite the local Primary School. There was a young and active population in the town and the school was well-attended and a hive of activity. The bulk of the staff working in the school tended to live in the locality.

Beside the school on the third side of the square stood a straggle of shops consisting of two small family run supermarkets, dry cleaners, a recently opened Off Licence and Phillips Jewellers.

On the fourth side of the square the local Health Centre was located. Much to the annoyance of Dr. Jameson, it was adjacent to Sean Drummond’s undertaking business and Funeral Home. The travel agents owned by Harry Hermon and Charlie Coleman adjoined the Funeral Home. It was a curious mixture.

Sean Drummond used to joke that Harry and Charlie looked after the travelling plans for the good people of Elvin when they were alive. But on that ‘final day’ the customers had to come to him to sort out their departure details. Also, Sean’s travel schedule was much simpler. He had only to organise a one way ticket with everyone hoping they were going to the same destination.

As Mike drove down the town, he looked at the one other building that stood beside the Funeral Home. This was the Garda Station. Generally Elvin was a peaceful town with little criminal activity apart from the odd sparring session on a Friday night after the regulars came out of The Castle Inn. As a result, there was only one Garda stationed in the town. Garda Seamus O’Malley had lived in Elvin for over twenty five years. His wife Mary worked in the dry cleaners, which was handy for getting his uniform cleaned, and their only child Augustine was in his final year at the school before moving on to St. Joseph’s Secondary School in Galston. Seamus was a big stout, red-faced man who could barely fit behind the wheel of the Garda car. His days of running after petty criminals or juveniles had long past. Seamus worked on the assumption that he would see out his career in Elvin. On that basis he was not going to get on the wrong side of the local population.

Other Garda stations might operate on the basis of zero tolerance. Garda tried to work on a system of total tolerance. There was no way that Seamus was going to get on the wrong side of locals by issuing tickets for double parking or raiding the Castle Inn at twelve o’clock at night.

‘Sure weren’t the people much happier in the pub having a few pints than outside arguing with each other.’

On the occasions that the district Sergeant, would contact him about his failure to issue any parking tickets or summons, Seamus would then go on a short campaign against any visitors coming into the area. Garda O’Malley could be quite inventive in his issue of tickets. On one occasion, he tried to ticket an American lady who was wheeling her suitcase down the Main Street to a local Guest House. When the lady rebuked his claim for jay walking, he then gave her a ticket for not having enough tread on the wheels of her suitcase.

The episode almost caused an international incident when it transpired that the lady was related to the United States Ambassador in Dublin. The local Sergeant, in Seamus O’Malley’s defence, did admit that the suitcase was being moved on the road and that as such the tyres should have the legal level of tread. But he tore up the ticket and had a quiet word in Seamus’s ear that if this was the best he could do in issuing tickets, maybe that in future he should just avoid doing so, up to his retirement date in five years time.

Chapter 2. 

Anne Marie Drummond brushed back a wisp of red curly hair as she studied herself in the mirror. She remarked to herself that she was still a fine looking woman despite her seventy odd years on this earth. Then the Lord had been good to her and she had been good to the Lord. O.K, there were signs of the odd grey hair but she was keeping them at bay with that little bottle she got down in Boots Chemists.

‘Trust in the Lord and the Lord will put trust in you.’

No wonder she was going grey with a son like Sean to worry about, coming home drunk out of his mind of a Saturday night. It was that crowd he mixed with, up at that rugby club. They were poisoning him with drink and bad habits. If he would go down to Mass more often he might meet a nice Irish Catholic girl. A nurse or a teacher would do. Someone with a good job. Someone with good morals. Even a good strong hard working farmer’s daughter would do. Anyone but the floozies he seemed to hang about with. Woman whose morals were almost as scanty as their dresses.

Anne Marie just did not know how Sean managed to run the family undertaking business, him coming home drunk. Then crawling out of bed in the morning to do a funeral. She feared that one of these days he would be breathalysed in the hearse, by the Guards. How would that look in the papers? Drunken Irishman in charge of funeral or something about being spirited away in the hearse.

They would never live down the shame and what would Dr. Jameson or Father O’Brien say. As things stood Sean was already in Dr. Jameson’s bad books because he kept parking the hearse outside the surgery. Dr. Jameson said that it was very bad for business and put his patients in a very nervous disposition. Sean just ignored him. He claimed he could park wherever he felt like it and it was also a good advertisement.

But Anne Marie worried more about the reaction of Father O’Brien than anyone else. After all, she mused, he was God’s representative in Elvin and Anne Marie worried more about her salvation than any other thing. During the day she prayed to the Blessed Virgin and to the squadron of Saints that she kept on top of her wardrobe. She had worn out more knees on her trousers than a carpet fitter.

She went to Mass every morning and popped back sometimes during the afternoon to top up again. Her husband, Malachy, when he was alive, used to top up every day as well. But Malachy did his topping up in the Castle Inn Public House. In was in the Castle Inn that Malachy eventually passed away. He ordered a glass of vodka and tomato juice, lifted the glass to his lips, and threw his head and the glass back. He kept on going until he hit the carpet. People said it was a blessing that he departed in what was his favourite place with all his friends around him. Anne