Coach Coach's sporting heroes

Written by: Adam Riches
Published: Sunday 27th March 2016

Hey, listen up. My name is Coach Coach. I'm a Coach. Your Coach! I am the Coach of the High School Volfsball Team the Soho Centaurs and I am addicted to gum. There, I said it.

I got me about three hundred words to tell you about my 'All-Time Top Five Heroes of All-Time in Sport'. Why five Coach and not the time-honoured accumulation of ten? Well, four reasons. 1) Five is my shirt number. (If you add nine and divide by two.) 2) I do not have time to think of ten. 3) I do not have time to think up another reason. 4)

These are an esteemed collection of guys and not-guys who are all guaranteed to harden my body parts just by thinking of them, let alone watching them strut their stuff. So read it, learn it, get it tattooed on your body and then make it a chant to yell at my face next time you ever feel the need to see a grown man stiff.

Number One, Always. A certain Kevin Obama Costner. That's not his middle name, more a symbol of the impact he has had on the history of sports and the history of the nipples of guys who like sports. I first saw Kev in a teenage dream I once had when he appeared to me like some half-grinned, dusky voiced, leather tanned mirage. 'Bull Durham'. Bam! Some critics call that 108 minutes of pure baseball flavoured charisma. I call it the longest time I have ever managed to maintain an erection. I am never more fertile than when I hear the opening lines to Tin Cup. A lot of people criticise that receding hairline of his but I choose to look at it as the gift he is giving us of more face. I am not a religious man, but I would visit his house once a week to sing his name, baptise my children in his sputum and invade the acting equivalent of Iraq (which I believe is that guy out of Lost).

Numbers Two and Three on the list are my Testicles or my franchise players, as I like to call them. First up, my left nut. He took a thud from a linebacker, a kick from a mule and a sprang from a handlebar all in the same crazy weekend whilst my right nut tried hard not to show fear. They're like a double act in that respect. One is funny, charismatic and does all the writing whilst the other is just happy to be there and probably owns a car. Every morning, day in, day out, they are both in my shorts, ready for adventures. That takes balls. Lot of guy's balls are pussies. Mine ain't. My balls have balls. Literally. Tiny, twin, satellite moons that dangle just south of the big old awe-inspiring planets.

My balls with balls also have balls and that takes balls to admit. Also, and I will be moving on from the subject of my balls real soon, a lot of balls are undescended at birth. Not Coach Coach's. His balls were sat waiting at the school gates, (as I like to call my sack), like it was the first day of school, all bathed, trimmed and ready to learn. The number of times those little round fellas have come through for me, not just in terms of giving me babies, but in terms of sheer honest-to-Costner companionship and advice, are way too many to mention.

Number Four? My Mom. I love her and feel slightly weird making her come right after my ball monologue, (a sentence I could possibly revisit, structurally speaking...), but she truly is the wind beneath my wings. (NB I do not have wings but I do have wind. Sorry.)

Town where I grew up, is a matriarchal society. By that I mean all the women have all the major jobs and roles in our community and that works out just fine. Truth is, when I missed that last-minute Volfsball shot all them years ago, the shot that haunts me so, I was the only male player in an all-female Volfsball team. Ragging I got from everybody was relentless. Everybody but my Mum. She just walked out on me and my Not-Mum, never to be seen again, which I took as her way of saving me from her intense verbal and physical annihilation she would undoubtedly have unleashed upon my ass for bringing major league shame to the proud Coach name. Day I became the actual Coach, so keen was I to spare any other boy from suffering the way I suffered, I immediately banned all females from playing Volfsball and made it a male-only sport. The reaction I got was almost completely negative, but it will not stop me in my quest for male equality in the world of professional sports.

Bane, from The Dark Knight Rises, is my fifth and penultimate [BCG Editor: we think he means 'final'] sporting hero. I was at that football game between the Gotham Rogues and the Rapid City Monuments having the worst time of my actual human life when he suddenly made my day stroke life a whole lot better. First off, that bullshit stadium of theirs has no roof and I got CGI sunburnt from the CGI sun that was CGI blazing down on me. Jesus Gotham, we ain't all got Andy Serkis' complexion you know? Some of us don't tan!

Next, I had to sit through that bullshit song by that bullshit kid in a suit with the admittedly lovely voice. Would it hurt to get some cheerleaders in the house or some massive bendy air people from showrooms to fight to the air-death? Fireworks perhaps? Finally, I was so off my face on gum that I illegally staked all of my savings and parts of my beautiful wife Pam on the Rogues getting beat. First minute, their Running Back breaks free and starts powering down the field to go notch himself a TD, when all of a sudden the goddamn pitch, stadium and lights explode! Bane comes out, gives a great speech, breaks a Doctor's neck, then destroys all the bridges so I can't get home till Batman comes save us and the game is called a draw! So why do I love him so? Well Coach Coach gots his initial stake back plus free fries for life for complaining about the inconvenience of the whole city getting invaded! Hoo! Thanks Bane. In a lifetime devoid of any actual victories, I'll take this as a 'W'.

'Adam Riches is Coach Coach' is at the Soho Theatre until the 2nd April 2016. Info & Tickets