12.WHEN SATURDAY’S GONE By Jonaldo

A Suitable Case For Treatment x 22

Wembley, it was said after Frank Haffey had picked the ball out of the net nine times in Scotland’s defeat to the auld enemy in 1961, was a graveyard for Scottish goalkeepers. Well our 3G pitch can be a pretty unforgiving surface as well for the custodians of the goal as Ron the Cat discovered this week. He let in seven and, unfortunately, let in would be a very appropriate description for the majority of those seven. I suppose to call it a graveyard would be inappropriate considering our advanced ages. Put it this way, if we were playing Walking Baseball and affiliated to a Major League team in LA we’d be called The Coffin Dodgers.

Ron has done remarkably well to play at all. Less than a year ago he virtually cut his finger and thumb off in an accident with an electric saw, they were dangling off his hand and were sewn back on in an emergency operation. He didn’t think he would be able to play ever again let alone in goal, so some allowance has to be made for the fact he cannot always use his hands with the confidence he once deployed.

In the world of young professional players health issues and DIY disasters rarely play a part in the scheme of things. It has to be remembered that some of our seniors have survived heart attacks, or are battling diabetes or, in Bill Hyde’s case, awaiting a hip replacement. Christ, if some of my lot signed for a pro football club they would need to start the process at the very commencement of the transfer window, as it’s likely to take the full thirty days to complete the medical! If your favourite team signed a goalkeeper who had fairly recently near as dammit sawn a finger and thumb off, I dare say you wouldn’t think much of your team’s prospects for the season. Therefore, you can hopefully understand why my team were walloped 7-3, although had the mistakes been discounted our performance would have merited a draw.

During my time playing walking football I have witnessed three players breaking fingers in goal and one breaking a wrist. Seniors can still pack a wallop in their shots and it isn’t all down to the fact that our bones are more brittle. Back in 2016-17, when our numbers weren’t as great, we used to allow sons of players to turn out in our games. Oddly, they’d adhere to the ‘walking’ part of our game far better than us seniors.

One such invited player was Mark, the son of Ron Atticus. He had played a very high standard of non-league football at Mangotsfield United and had once scored the perfect hat trick (header, left foot, right foot). He took his turn between the sticks one match but a powerful shot from a near seventy year old, twice his age, broke two of his fingers and he then needed an operation. He was at that time the player-manager of a decent non-league side and didn’t want it getting out as he knew that if the players of his club discovered that he acquired his injury playing walking football he would be the subject of much ridicule and would probably lose the dressing room so to speak.