As a young man I was a keen footballer. Never really all that good, never really had any coaching, but enthusiastic for all that. I played to a decent Sunday League level. And that was in the days when the Portsmouth Sunday League had, I think, eight or even possibly ten divisions, each made up of fourteen teams. There must have been about 1600 players registered in that league.
As well as other teams and leagues I played for and in, I played for several seasons in the Sunday League Senior Division 2. That puts me and the team I played for in the top quarter of all those teams and players. Which means I must have been one of the best 400 parks players in the Portsmouth area in my day. Heady heights, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Anyway, all those days went by, and sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and good old fashioned age finally put an end to my playing days. I thought I’d never play football again once I’d quit. Then, at the age of 61, in September 2014, I found out about Walking Football. I’m up for a laugh, within limits, so I thought I’d go along.
It was great fun, and we got to play on the actual pitch at the actual West Leigh Park, home of National League Havant & Waterlooville FC. Two former Portsmouth players, the Assistant Manager (Shaun Gale) who coaches us, and the Manager (Lee Bradbury) joined in sometimes. Imagine, an ex-Manchester City multi-million pound transferred player joining in a kickabout with me, one of the Portsmouth area’s top 400 parks players from 1977. Crazy days.
Anyway, the days just kept getting crazier, and the Many Shades of Grey, as the walking football team decided to call themselves, went from strength to strength. As this is written I have played in 225 small-sided matches for the club, including in the FA People’s Cup Semi-Final in 2016. Oh yes, I’ve played in a FA Cup semi-final. Sort of.
I’ve even scored a few goals. Including one in a FA Cup Semi-Final. Sort of.
This story is about match number 222 in my Many Shades career. It was in Swindon, at an indoor venue called the Swindome, against Trowbridge. Excellent venue, I must complement them on that. But there was a little problem.
At the Many Shades we play three-touch football, as sanctioned by The Football Association. Not only is this a little bit demanding skill-wise, but it is also immensely safer health-wise. If a player is limited to three touches of the ball before the next player must touch it, it means he won’t try to dribble past anyone, and thus it also slows the players down. It means there is virtually no need to tackle a player, and so minimises the chances of physical contact. Fundamentally it is an all-round safer way of playing football for us old folks.
But not in Wiltshire. There they subscribe to the Walking Football Association’s rules. The WFA insists that it is going to cut out cheating (running), and all physical contact. These self-appointed guardians of the game, who seem to spend much of their time slagging off any other opinion-holders of the game, insist that unlimited touch is safer. Am I allowed to swear? Yes? Bollocks is it safer.
It is faster and infinitely more physical than the three-touch game. Walking football it rarely is, with players jogging about most of the time, but only when they aren’t sprinting. And the referees we had that day, qualified to international standard according to the WFA, were dead hot on exactly where you could take kick-ins from, but just allowed contact as a matter of course and running as a de facto part and parcel of it all.
So against Trowbridge in my 222nd appearance for the Many Shades of Grey, I was playing in defence, and went to cut off a guy charging down their right wing. Just as he was about to shoot, I made my challenge, and just nicked the ball off his toe. Needless to say, a combination of his momentum and the power of the shot he was attempting meant that my right foot took the battering that had been intended for the ball.
Now maybe I’m just a big softy, but I recognise that Walking Football is meant to be a sport for the older person, the person who might be a little more frail and vulnerable than he was when he was in his twenties. So if I clatter into someone I apologise and ask after their wellbeing. This guy? No, he just appealed to the ref for the kick-in.
So I had taken a mighty blow to the foot, but in time-honoured tradition I decided to run it off. And in WFA versions of walking football, you can run it off, they don’t mind. I finished that game, and went on to feature in all or part of the next three matches we played that day. It was only when we got changed that I realised that I had taken an interesting knock, as the middle toe of my right foot was an unusual shade of purple.
Still, I drove home, and sought a bit of sympathy from Cathy. Usually she doesn’t offer much sympathy when I get injured at football, other than seeking retribution on the perpetrator if she happens to be watching at the time. One look at my battered and bruised foot, and she decided “I think you should go to A&E.”
So she drove, and I went in to be seen by a nurse practitioner. She squeezed and prodded my naked foot, asking “does this hurt?” She got a variety of answers, mostly “Yes, that hurts.” But there were a few of “No.” I asked her if I might have broken a metatarsal, but she said not. Another chance to swan around like David Beckham was gone. Then she squeezed the end joint of my big toe, and totally involuntarily I let rip a good solid Anglo-Saxon “Shit!” So although the middle toe was the most impressively bruised, the damage seemed to have been most severe on the big toe. Her squeezing it had hurt so much that I was actually shaking inside a little, feeling slightly sick.
Time for an x-ray then. She got me to follow her round to the waiting area, and I had to ask her to slow down so that I could keep up. It wasn’t long before I was in the x-ray room. This was a far cry from the sophistication of the Linacs I was more used to. The radiographer (not a radiologist, and no, I don’t know what the difference is) took a couple of shots of my foot, then wanted to set up a side-on view of the big toe.
He got a strip of rubberised plastic sheet, a bit like parcel-wrap, and tucked it around my four smaller toes, then got me to pull it towards myself while keeping the foot at a steady angle. He seemed to take an age, and I could feel my grip slipping off the plastic. Fortunately he returned before anything bad happened.
Then I was back in the waiting area chatting to a young woman of about nineteen who was also in with a football injury. She had had a nasty lump kicked onto her shin. Apparently the opponent’s tackle had gone up underneath her shin pad. It looked very painful, with a raw graze and raised mound of flesh the size of half an egg. I hate to say it, and didn’t comment to her, but when I was her age it was the sort of injury that I’d have just slapped soap and water on followed by some Savlon, and made sure I didn’t play again until tomorrow. It wouldn’t have been a hospital job back then. Times have changed.
So the Nurse Practitioner came to call me back, and once again tested me for fraud by seeing how well I could keep up with her. Once I had returned to the cubicle with her, she showed me the x-ray results, and I was amazed to see that the middle toe appeared completely undamaged. Just bruising then. In fact they all looked crack-free to my untrained eye.
Then she flicked to the shot of my big toe side-on, and pointed out to me a little concave shadow on the inside of the end bone’s joint. She said that it looked like I had chipped a small flake of bone off at the joint. That was why it hurt so much when she’d pressed it just there. She also showed me loads of little spurs of bone in different places on my foot, spurs that attach themselves quite naturally and normally to us all as we grow older.
So at least I knew why my foot hurt. With my twisted knee as well, she had decided to issue me with a pair of (non-returnable) crutches. After setting them up for my height, she showed me how to use them, which was a very counter-intuitive thing to master. Put both crutches forward, then swing the right (injured) leg forward and use the crutches and the leg to bear the weight while you then bring the left leg alongside the right. Repeat until you reach your destination.
It’s difficult to get into the rhythm of it as you naturally want to swing your left arm forward with your right leg and vice versa. Going to watch the lads at walking footy training the next day it took me hours to get from the car park to pitch-side. Well, if not hours, a long time anyway. And back again afterwards.
Anyway, the nurse said that if one of the specialists picked up anything else on the x-rays they’d be in touch. I thanked her for her help, and hobbled out of the hospital back to the car for Cathy to drive us home. Once there, it was the up-and-down stairs bit that was most complicated, and in spite of Cathy’s advice to go up and down on my bum, I struggled one step at a time, keeping the right leg as straight as possible.
Anyway, it’s Wednesday now, and although my toes still hurt, it’s my knee that is actually giving me the biggest reminder of my day out at Swindon. It’ll be a couple of weeks yet before I get back out on the pitch I think.
Update: This incident happened on 2nd December 2018. I am editing this post on 16th March 2019. The knee is still sore and I still can’t play football. The physio at Havant & Waterlooville FC has diagnosed a Grade 2 Medial Collateral Ligament injury, and given me a treatment regime, all of which means I should be fit to return on or about 18th April. My GP had previously offered me a physiotherapy appointment in late May…
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