Sunday morning. Early Sunday morning. As in, the pubs aren’t even open early Sunday morning. And oh, what I wouldn’t give to be snug in a cozy bar right about now, with a silky smooth pint or six of ale to soothe my wicked hangover. Instead, I’m standing up to my ankles in mud, wearing shorts which display my white, spindly legs in all their goose fleshed glory, hugging my hands under my arms as protection against the icy wind and wondering, as I do at this time every Sunday morning, just why in the hell I play football.
As a footnote to American readers, I’m talking about real football here. The kind you play with your feet. No pads, no helmets, no taking a break every 8 seconds. Real football – nothing but you and twenty-one other lost souls on a windswept, waterlogged field chasing a ball the weight of a cinder block and ninety more minutes before you can slope off and put on some dry clothes and drink lunch in the comfort of a welcoming nearby hostelry.
The professionals of course have hot baths, and masseurs with warming lotions and Super Model girlfriends waiting for them when they retire from the pitch, but for us hardy few, the amateurs playing in Britain’s Sunday Leagues, football is played the hard way, in city parks and country fields, where the groundskeepers often have four legs, and supply us with milk. Out there, braving the elements week after week, dressed in ridiculously inadequate uniforms and wondering if this will be the week when you finally succumb to hypothermia. Real football.
To begin with, there are only two types of amateur football pitch. The one where you toss up to see who gets to defend the shallow end and type where you need ropes and crampons to get from one side to the other. Few are entirely covered in grass. Most pay more than a passing resemblance to plowed fields. Sometimes the pitch markings are discernible; sometimes the goals have real nets. Very occasionally there’s a referee although the accepted protocol is that in the absence of an official league representative, any disputes will be settled by the spectator. He will be a middle aged man with a black and white dog.
The players on each team may have some tenuous link to one another. Perhaps they all work at the same firm, or are regulars at the same pub. Often they’re simply a group of friends who may or may not see each other away from the football field. Rarely however, does an entire team share the attribute of talent. Oh there’s usually one or two skillful players on each side; the one’s who score the goals, know the rules and spend most of the game racing from one end of the pitch to the other, doing all the work while rudely bemoaning the lack of enthusiasm among their team mates. But for the most part, Sunday League players are more like me. Guys who aren’t exactly sure what they’re doing there and are fervently wishing they weren’t.
Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s fair to say that the majority of the players are actually putting some effort into the game and genuinely care whether or not they’re on the winning side. Me, I recognized quite early on in my career that the selectors for the international squads were never going to come a-knocking on my door and if I could get through each game without my team mates attempting to kill me, I was quite content.
Possibly this was the reason I tended towards the goal keeper’s position (it certainly wasn’t from any aptitude for the role). Rather than spending my morning racing frantically and hopelessly after the ball, I was able to contemplate the higher aspects of life. Just how much did I have to drink last night? How did I manage to spend that much money? Just what was that girl’s name? While my teammates huffed and puffed around the field, trying not to be sick, I contented myself with leaning against a goal post with my arms folded, stirring every once in awhile to flail hopelessly at the ball as it whizzed past my head. Picking it out of the net every few minutes was plenty exercise for me, thank you very much.
Some days, I didn’t even have to do that very often. If we happened to be playing a team even more inept than us, there were games when I’d hardly let in a single goal. Of course, having made my goalkeeping debut in a game where we lost 26-0, pretty much any occasion where I kept the score against to single figures, was something of a moral victory on my part.
There were times, on particularly frigid days; when bending to pick the ball out of the net wasn’t really enough to keep the blood circulating and a little more action would have been welcome. Looking back, it’s a wonder I never thought to take a hip flask onto the field with me, but as this was during my time as a nicotine user, I did occasionally sneak a quiet smoke while my teammates did battle at the far end. It was this flaunting of the rules which caused me to be ejected for the one and only time in my career. I’d just lit up when against the run of play; the opposition launched an attack on my goal. They hadn’t troubled me all day and, not expecting them to make it all the way to my end, I continued my leisurely appreciation of the fine weed until they were dangerously close. Before I knew it, the goalmouth was crowded with action and it was only my lightning reflexes which allowed my to fling my still lit cigarette off to one side before someone got hurt. Sadly, this referee was less myopic than usual and saw me do it. Off I went, my replacement failed to prevent the subsequent (and completely unjustified) penalty kick and we lost by the only goal of the match.
I suppose we must have won some of the games in which I played, but I can’t say I recall any. There must have been some good memories too, but none immediately spring to mind. Just a lot of cold, wet mornings battling the elements while more intelligent folk were snug in bed nursing their hangovers
But that’s Sunday football and is why I loved it.
As a footnote to American readers, I’m talking about real football here. The kind you play with your feet. No pads, no helmets, no taking a break every 8 seconds. Real football – nothing but you and twenty-one other lost souls on a windswept, waterlogged field chasing a ball the weight of a cinder block and ninety more minutes before you can slope off and put on some dry clothes and drink lunch in the comfort of a welcoming nearby hostelry.
The professionals of course have hot baths, and masseurs with warming lotions and Super Model girlfriends waiting for them when they retire from the pitch, but for us hardy few, the amateurs playing in Britain’s Sunday Leagues, football is played the hard way, in city parks and country fields, where the groundskeepers often have four legs, and supply us with milk. Out there, braving the elements week after week, dressed in ridiculously inadequate uniforms and wondering if this will be the week when you finally succumb to hypothermia. Real football.
To begin with, there are only two types of amateur football pitch. The one where you toss up to see who gets to defend the shallow end and type where you need ropes and crampons to get from one side to the other. Few are entirely covered in grass. Most pay more than a passing resemblance to plowed fields. Sometimes the pitch markings are discernible; sometimes the goals have real nets. Very occasionally there’s a referee although the accepted protocol is that in the absence of an official league representative, any disputes will be settled by the spectator. He will be a middle aged man with a black and white dog.
The players on each team may have some tenuous link to one another. Perhaps they all work at the same firm, or are regulars at the same pub. Often they’re simply a group of friends who may or may not see each other away from the football field. Rarely however, does an entire team share the attribute of talent. Oh there’s usually one or two skillful players on each side; the one’s who score the goals, know the rules and spend most of the game racing from one end of the pitch to the other, doing all the work while rudely bemoaning the lack of enthusiasm among their team mates. But for the most part, Sunday League players are more like me. Guys who aren’t exactly sure what they’re doing there and are fervently wishing they weren’t.
Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s fair to say that the majority of the players are actually putting some effort into the game and genuinely care whether or not they’re on the winning side. Me, I recognized quite early on in my career that the selectors for the international squads were never going to come a-knocking on my door and if I could get through each game without my team mates attempting to kill me, I was quite content.
Possibly this was the reason I tended towards the goal keeper’s position (it certainly wasn’t from any aptitude for the role). Rather than spending my morning racing frantically and hopelessly after the ball, I was able to contemplate the higher aspects of life. Just how much did I have to drink last night? How did I manage to spend that much money? Just what was that girl’s name? While my teammates huffed and puffed around the field, trying not to be sick, I contented myself with leaning against a goal post with my arms folded, stirring every once in awhile to flail hopelessly at the ball as it whizzed past my head. Picking it out of the net every few minutes was plenty exercise for me, thank you very much.
Some days, I didn’t even have to do that very often. If we happened to be playing a team even more inept than us, there were games when I’d hardly let in a single goal. Of course, having made my goalkeeping debut in a game where we lost 26-0, pretty much any occasion where I kept the score against to single figures, was something of a moral victory on my part.
There were times, on particularly frigid days; when bending to pick the ball out of the net wasn’t really enough to keep the blood circulating and a little more action would have been welcome. Looking back, it’s a wonder I never thought to take a hip flask onto the field with me, but as this was during my time as a nicotine user, I did occasionally sneak a quiet smoke while my teammates did battle at the far end. It was this flaunting of the rules which caused me to be ejected for the one and only time in my career. I’d just lit up when against the run of play; the opposition launched an attack on my goal. They hadn’t troubled me all day and, not expecting them to make it all the way to my end, I continued my leisurely appreciation of the fine weed until they were dangerously close. Before I knew it, the goalmouth was crowded with action and it was only my lightning reflexes which allowed my to fling my still lit cigarette off to one side before someone got hurt. Sadly, this referee was less myopic than usual and saw me do it. Off I went, my replacement failed to prevent the subsequent (and completely unjustified) penalty kick and we lost by the only goal of the match.
I suppose we must have won some of the games in which I played, but I can’t say I recall any. There must have been some good memories too, but none immediately spring to mind. Just a lot of cold, wet mornings battling the elements while more intelligent folk were snug in bed nursing their hangovers
But that’s Sunday football and is why I loved it.
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