On… retirement?

Life in the old dog yet?

“Life is there to be lived.”
Anon.

I have always been terrible at football. When I tell people this they assume I’m being self-deprecating, but I’m not — I am woeful.

I play five-aside and 11-aside pub football, and I play on astroturf, and 3G, and in the mud, and at the weekends amongst the dog muck and broken glass on lopsided council-park grass. My Sunday team’s league is the absolute foot of the football pyramid, bottom division… as an adult you cannot play a worse standard of football unless you belong to a church. And I’m normally a sub…

Fortunately, my astounding lack of talent – and fitness – has been no barrier to playing the beautiful game. In fact, aside from a break in my early twenties, and another in my mid-thirties when I had a long-term injury, I think I’ve played at least once a week – and often up to five times a week – my entire adult life. From the early noughties to the twenty-twenties, I’ve lost count of the midweek five-asides, and the 11-aside games I’ve played on a Saturday or Sunday. Left back, right back, centre back, centre mid, winger, player manager… I’ve done them all.

In that twenty years of 11-aside, I have never scored a goal.

But I love it. I love the feeling of heading a ball straight back to the fat goalie who hoofed it up toward their big man up top. The last-ditch tackle when you’re exhausted and defending a one goal lead and their mate the ref keeps playing stoppage time. The piss-taking of the opposition when you finally equalise after they dicked on you for the whole of the first half. The ‘could get nasty’ disputes along the touchline with their subs when you’re running the line. The drinks with the boys after the 14-0 drubbing you knew was coming before you started but went ahead and played it anyway.

And on Monday it might be over.

Is this a) George H, or b) George Best?

Two years ago I injured myself in the 89^th minute of a suicidally-poor team display in Palmer Park, Reading. Limping off, I knew I’d done something bad, and that it was all my own fault. For the third Saturday in a row I’d been boxing in the morning before playing 90 minutes in the afternoon, too many hard workouts trying to get fit for an ultra-white collar fight I was too old and unfit to have signed up for. I felt something go, hoped it’d heal, and it didn’t. And six months of physio, two X-rays and three MRIs later, I still can’t put my foot through the ball.

On Monday I go to the consultant to see if I’ll ever be cured…

If it’s bad news, I have one consolation. I love football - I’ve even written a novel about it - and I’ve always prioritised it. I didn’t swap Sunday park hoofball for the shopping centre as soon as I got a girlfriend. Didn’t stay in on midweek nights to watch crap on TV because it was easier and it was cold outside. Didn’t give up on an activity just because I was no good at it. In fact I’ve spent hour after hour, day after day, and year after year doing something I loved. I could not have done more.

But everywhere I look I see people who have given up on the things they love. Men who think they’re too old to draw or sculpt. Writers who no longer write. Dancers who put their dreams on the shelf. Travellers talking themselves out of the hassle of getting onto a plane…

What is life, if it’s not filled with doing the things that make us feel alive?

Don’t ever give up on your dreams. Don’t ever stop doing what you love. And if it’s bad news, adapt. I’ve already bought my goalie gloves…

++ What did you love doing that you can’t do now? What do you love doing that you neglect? How do you cope knowing you’ll never play just behind the number 9 in front of a packed New Den?

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Imagine being a Charlton fan. Just imagine it.

The fucking shame of it!

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PS: From London Bridge it’s not such a bad sight