The Footy

An extract about 5-a-side football from a new book, Above Head Height, by James Brown [Quercus, £13.99] caught my eye in the Guardian last Saturday [4/3/17]. “Five-a-side players are the true footballers….We play for love, not money. We play it for life….Our warm up is non-existent and involves a few seconds of a stretch that was in fashion 15 years before…. Our performance is patchy and not what it used to be….. It’s sporting karaoke, a time and place to live out our dreams. We are amateur footballers. We are the game…..[It’s] the humour and the goals, saves and passes that make our day. The moments you dwell on when you leave.”

I can identify with all of that. There is a picture of James alongside the article. He looks a bit younger than me, but I’m also still turning out on a Thursday evening and I share all of these emotions. I know exactly how I should approach these games but I rarely follow my own advice. I get carried away with the occasion. I start imagining that I can still do things that I know - thinking about it at any other time of the week - are beyond me now. This includes repeatedly getting up the pitch and then back again, in time to defend effectively.

My stints in goal are getting longer, not because my reactions as a goal-keeper are any better, but others are not always so keen to play in that position and their contribution to the team as outfield players is likely to be greater than mine these days. Also, in a kind of “meant to be” gesture from well-meaning friends, I was given some goal-keeping gloves as a recent birthday present. They are still very clean. That is because to make a save the ball has to hit me somewhere on my body [but not usually, as it happens, on my hands], or be coming at me from such a distance that I can get a foot to it in time to divert it. I don’t do diving any more. I can remember the Weetabix advert.

When I’m released from the nets, I should be content with sitting in as a sweeper, either “getting a foot in” or forcing opposing forwards to go wider to take their shots at our goal from a narrower angle, but, of course, I want to score goals, because that is what I did when I played 11-a-side. Given that my “career” peaked in 1977, when [I think] I was top scorer for the season with 26 goals, the assumption that I might still have something to offer up front is a bit far-fetched, but try telling that to me at 7.30 on a Thursday evening.

I scored a goal last time out. Hardly note-worthy when we won 19-10 and some of my team-mates were bagging double hat-tricks. My goal went to my head, though, as it always does, and I immediately tried another long-range effort when others around me were better placed to shoot. I’m not finished yet. I’ll know it’s time to go when they stop sending me the emails each week. Then, the comparative contribution that the railways make to my general well-being may increase a notch, though obviously not my fitness levels.

Old Wallaseyans first team, Liverpool and District Old Boys Amateur League First Division Champions, 1976/7. [Photo taken somewhat after the event, from memory, at some time in the late 1970s]