Category: Football

As a quick update for my two loyal readers. My rather wonderful, if sometimes sickly, brigade of football players will have to cope without me for a few months as I’ll be away. But I decided to leave on a high last night as I scored 4.5 goals. It would have been 5, but one of their team kicked the ball in as an own goal, but I think it would have gone in anyway, so we’ll call it 5. I keep signing up one more person every time I visit the White Lion, so hopefully Liam (who is taking over organising this for a while) will have enough players to ensure it doesn’t all fall apart by the time I get back. On the bright side, I won’t get home with several hundred little bits of black rubber (or whatever it is) from the Astroturf (again, or whatever it is) pitch thing.

I think Chay wins player of the evening for managing to slide over on more than 20 occasions which added to the general excitement. And he was playing with a damaged finger, I think that deserves quite a lot of respect. My footballing ability never really improved, but my enthusiasm never waned at least.

I’ve realised I haven’t recently updated my two loyal followers on this blog about my brave five a side exploits. In my enthusiasm for this project, we’ve got three dates booked this month for the first time (including twice in one week, so what a time to be alive!!) as once a month on a Monday just wasn’t enough for someone of my footballing ability. Or something like that anyway, although I somehow scored a goal last night which wasn’t an own goal so I awarded myself man of the match. I ignored that some of the players were running solidly for over an hour whilst I had a little lean against the wall quite a lot.

And for anyone interested in joining this whole arrangement, e-mail jw@julianwhite.uk as goodness knows if we have enough players for the number of games that I’m organising at the moment. Although there are some star players (I won’t name them as this isn’t a football review site) a few of us struggle to kick the ball straight. As a big bonus though, they’re relaid the pitches at Goals so that when players fall over, which is quite often, the situation isn’t quite as painful. Julian S is still appalled at what he considers such a dangerous activity, he’s worried I’ll be too injured to visit the pub, which is a very kind sentiment although I note I haven’t injured myself for months….. And I run the risk of having three players who are the staff at my favourite Norwich pub, so if I injure all three of them then the service would be rather more interesting.

I also admire that some people are playing despite their injuries, although the youngest member of the team has broken his collarbone (not playing football I’d add) and can’t play for three weeks. Most inconvenient for my planning purposes. It’s now two Mondays and one Friday a month for anyone interested, or some similar combination.

This is all going marvellously, my idea to get enough people to play five a side has worked sufficiently well to see 11 people turn up last night meaning we could field two complete teams. It involved quite a lot of thinking for me to work out how to balance the two teams, so that one slightly weaker team could play with six people against a slightly stronger team with five people. It was all a bit confusing, so I just handed out bibs, helpfully provided by Simon, as I felt might be appropriate and fortunately it transpired to be a very close game.

After managing to hurt my hamstring, or whatever it’s called as I don’t know, at the last match, I’m pleased that my warming up exercises meant that I wasn’t injured during this hour of running about. It’s bloody tiring though all this running, so I mostly stood at the back and pretended this was essential to support our goalkeeper. I didn’t go in goal this time, the new talent coming through seems to kick the ball very hard and I was worried about my safety. I wasn’t worried about the safety of others though, they need to toughen up.

Good to welcome Michael, a barman from O’Reilly’s days, and that meant a mini reunion with him for Ian and Ross after fifteen or so years. Dylan ran about with enthusiasm and youth, which annoyed me, whilst Liam and Danny play like I do, namely with a degree of incompetence but lots of enthusiasm. Nathan also has far too much energy, but he’s nearly 30 and so that will soon dry up. Alex, who claimed to be of average ability, was the new star of the show, so he might get randomly placed once again on my side at the next game. Ian and Simon are good at controlling the pitch, or whatever the technical term is, during play by shouting a lot, but I ignore all of that as I get muddled up with where I’m supposed to be. Also good to meet Inca, recruited by Ian, and I’m hopeful of ensuring we have enough now for future matches although I’ll keep recruiting new talent (or lack of it). It’s not important who wins, but I’m certainly not planning to lose by much….

Anyway, I digress. Enough of football and back to history and pubs.

I’m very much known now amongst friends for my sporting prowess (I think that’s what they call it), something evident now I’ve managed to get over ten friends together to play five a side football. And since there’s the next instalment of that tomorrow evening, I’ve invested in Astroturf football boots, something I’d never heard of until about two weeks ago. My former walking trainers weren’t really quite up to the mark, so I can imagine I’ll be far better with all this new footwear. And it might reduce the frankly negative comments made from certain regulars in the White Lion and King’s Head when I come limping in from some injury I’ve incurred during squash, walking or football. Sport can be very dangerous….

As one of Norwich’s leading athletes I decided that I should come up with a new idea to show off my sporting prowess, because long-distance walking, squash, bar billiards and competitive crisp eating just isn’t enough for me. I’ve straggled enough people together to form a five a side team, or technically two teams otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a game. We played at Goals on Hall Road and I must say that they’re incredibly welcoming and made the whole thing easy to book and arrange.

I’ve realised a few things after playing for an hour which include that bar billiards hasn’t given the ability to sprint for short distances tens of times, as well as discovering that my feet are more delicate than I had anticipated. And I’ve grazed my knees, so the multiple warnings I received in the King’s Head the night before that I might injure myself sort of were very valid concerns. I did score a goal though, so that was a highlight and I think it was the best of the game, an essential part of our victory against the other team.

Next game in a few weeks and then probably fortnightly after that, fortunately it seems that just about everyone wants to play again and some new recruits are coming along to add to the mix. And Dylan is a very good little player although I ignored his taunts of why couldn’t I run as fast as him. Everyone else didn’t feel the need to have food after the game, but Dylan and I needed Chicken McNuggets, so I’m suspecting that we’re the two professionals of this whole arrangement.

I probably should get a couple more photos next time as well in case I feel the need to write about it.