The redemption of David Duke

A salute is in order, tonight, to a young footballer you’ve never heard of. Here’s a story that’s a million miles away from your Premiership tantrums and snorting disgraces, and a million times more uplifting for it. It concerns no multimillionaire pop culture icon, but a young pro who earns less in a year than Chelsea captain John Terry trousers in a week.

Two weeks ago, David Duke – the only Scotsman regularly in the Swindon Town side I adopted years ago – had a bad game. Nothing unusual in that, of course – anyone who recalls seeing Swindon Town will know there have been more than a few bad games, individually and collectively, in those red shirts over recent years.

Trouble is, David’s bad performance was deemed to have cost us a match by many fans – he let a Torquay player turn away from him in the box, and set up a goal for a colleague. After that incident, he was booed by his own fans when he got the ball. Honestly – the boos echoed round the ground. We didn’t all agree with the morons – I was horrified, Terry who sits next to me had a pop at those nearby joining in – but it happened nonetheless.

The manager, in a rare piece of sensible substitution, hauled him off. David spent the rest of the match miserably sat in the dugout, being comforted by colleagues – sympathy which, although nice to see at one level, must have only compounded the hurt in such a cut-throat, macho world.

Most men, I think, would have crumpled under the pressure. Players have been known to ask managers to drop them – at least for home matches – after getting the kind of abuse Duke suffered. And Duke’s always looked like a “confidence player” – a guy who, when feeling good about the world, looks lithe and speedy and skilful. Head down, however, nothing seems to go right. I said that night that I didn’t think Duke would play again for Town.

How wrong I was. An away trip to Stockport last week provided a chance to get away from the boo boys and – remarkably – he scored (remarkable because, as a defender, he doesn’t typically get many) in an otherwise dismal 2-1 defeat.

But the big test was his return to the County Ground, for an FA Cup match against giant (if fallen) Sheffield Wednesday. And, to my mind, it was a mighty show of defiance.

Booed, again, as the team lists were read out, I feared the worst. I’ve always thought it must be quite fun to be booed by opposition fans. But I can’t imagine what a punch in the guts it must be to be abused by those who are supposed to be there backing you. You know – pushing you on to greater things. Paying your wages.

But what followed was 90 minutes of defiance. It started steadily enough; a good dummy and pass early on got a cheer from those of us willing him on. A good clearance, another header – no more than the standard stuff of a decent fullback – but it looked like he was, play by play, regaining his confidence.

So he pushed up, aided by a change in formation which saw him move up the left flank. And then it came, just as Town, unexpectedly 2-1 up, were having their entirely normal wobble where the score could go anywhere – 2-2, 2-3, 2-4. Jenkins crossed and Duke, on the edge of the box, sent a piledriver of a shot into the bottom left corner of the goal. Lovely stuff and, we thought, something that would cap a decent performance.

What followed showed the importance of psychology in football. Duke was a man transformed, suddenly gathering the ball on the flank and playing like a dashing Scots winger in the finest Davie Cooper-esque tradition. Jinking runs, neat interlinking with team-mates, winning corners and he could have bagged a hat-trick, a good save and a linesman’s flag notwithstanding. The crowd, as fickle as any in Julius Caesar, was giving him olays every time he did something good. There were a lot of olays.

His final class move of the afternoon was the most understated one, and it happened after final whistle. He could have bathed in the applause of the crowd, but he just walked off the pitch, much as he had a couple of weeks earlier in totally different circumstances. And, as the hacks asked him for a comment for the radio and paper as he left the ground, he apparently gave them a polite “no comment”.

I don’t know if he’s been reading much Kipling of late, but you’ll find few better examples of meeting with triumph and disaster, and treating these two imposters the same. Hats off to him for finding the pluck.