Free Memoirs of a Karate Fighter by Ralph Robb Page B

visualized winning.
    Another advantage of the tournament’s venue being so close by was that there would be no arguments about whose turn it was to drive. Normally, there would have been a heated debate that usually started with the better-off amongst us giving many reasons why their pristine cars could not make a long journey and then electing someone else to subject their vehicle to the wear and tear.
    As the last of the team members arrived, Leslie offered to take me and a few others in his recently acquired Mark II Ford Escort that he had at last made roadworthy. But the invitation was not extended to Clinton, who had wandered off and stood beside his brother Ewart’s car. He stood silent and motionless. I thought he was doing so because he did not want to be beholden to Leslie. But in hindsight, I now realize it was another warning about the changes taking place within my cousin and closest friend.
    We arrived late in Birmingham but the event, in common with almost all karate tournaments, was running behind schedule. There was a buzz from other competitors as we walked into the changing room, and whispers of our arrival echoed along the walls that were lined with white ceramic tiles. Pretending not to notice the stir we had caused, we began to change into our karate
gis
. Fighters can be very superstitious andalthough no one at the club would admit to any such thing, it was not difficult to see it in those getting changed. Some would remove clothing in a set order or tie their coloured belts in a particular manner. I would never allow my shin and foot-pads or my hand-mitts to be washed, no matter how dirty or bloodstained they became. To do so would have diluted their acquired magic.
    All the top competitors knew each other and some of them came over to greet the senior members. Like so many in the second team, I was only considered worthy of the briefest of nods, it was the type of greeting that said:
Yeah, I’ve seen you fight, you’ve got promise but you’re not there yet.
I had been trained to go into a bout expecting to win, and with this came a certain amount of arrogance. Along with the rest of the second team, I viewed most fighters from other clubs as inferiors. While any conceit or boastfulness in victory was frowned upon, there can be no room for humility in the mind of a competitor who wants to win: he has to enter a bout confident in his own ability to emerge as the winner of any fight he enters.
    When we entered the cavernous sports hall, it seemed to us that the other clubs had collectively conjured up the theory that if they went out of their way to shake our hands and wish us luck we would go easier on them. I would have respected them more if they had just come out and said what they felt:
I hope I have it in me to give your backside a good kicking today.
    The few fighters we did not take exception to when they greeted us before the fighting began were from Toxteth in Liverpool. They were genuinely pleased to see us and took pride in associating themselves with our club to the point that they would come and support the YMCA once their team had been eliminated. There was an affinity between us – despite them practising Shotokan – based on the most tenuous of grounds: that of skin colour. I was intrigued by this club as all its members were from one of the oldest black communities in England. Unlike our parents, their forebears were born in England, they spoke with a ‘Scouse’ accent, their skin tones were various shades of light brown and it was obvious that their parents and ancestors were a mixture of black and white and every shade in between. I detected that they felt a sense of alienation from British society that was similar to that experienced by peopleof my background, who were still perceived as relative newcomers to Britain’s shores. What separated these guys from white Liverpudlians was not so much the physical results of their melanin levels but the