September

[Bierzo Baggie]

Lewes FC have a +35s Vets side that trains on a Friday. Goodness knows why, I didn't fancy a night on the lash with the lads and headed down to the 3G facility behind the Pan Siro. I met up with a crew of has-been/ wanna-be footballers, all well past their footballing sell-by date. We stretched, we warmed up. We stood around the centre circle and someone read a prayer, of sorts.

'We are here because we love football and want to play,
We are old and easily broken.
We play to win, but we play for fun.
We all have lives and jobs away from this.
We do this for fun'

No gouging, deliberate kicking of shins, two-footed lunges, That Sort Of Thing. This was going to be hard!
But I relaxed, assured that we would be OK no matter how out of touch we might be.

It was, really, really tough. 60 minutes of constant movement. I played centre back, my preferred station, and was promptly tasked with marking Floyd. Floyd is a whisp of a man, coal-black, rapid, agile and apparently carved from granite. I had a torrid time trying to keep hold of him. He scored twice, so I guess you could say I didn't do too well. When Floyd wasn't twisting my blood I had Xavi to deal with. A vociferous (in his native tongue) Spaniard, another whippet with a penchant for sudden bursts of speed and a twist and turn or two.

We scored seven in the hour allotted, four more than the other lot. It didn't really matter, though. The game's the thing, and what a glorious thing it was, to be able to play without fear of tearing or breaking something, with people just happy to be running about on a (state of the art 3G) football pitch under floodlights.

That sounds great. We have a similar session of 5-a-side futsal on Fridays and it's punishing stuff, especially when we haven't got changes or when a few nimble, younger players turn up. As for the (accidental) kicking of shins, (very occasional) two footed lunges etc ....ahem, guilty m'lord  I was once the Tony Pulis of futsal...