14.WHEN SATURDAY’S GONE By Jonaldo

Injuries

In the seven years plus I have been playing walking/senior football I have broken a rib, badly bruised ribs three times, busted my nose heading a last minute winner while simultaneously making contact with the back of a defender’s head, knocked myself out once, been concussed a further two occasions, done my ankle and knee ligaments when I stood on the ball and was out of action for four months, although three of those months were consumed by the final covid lockdown so I didn’t miss much football, broken or badly bruised toes on a few occasions and received a musculoskeletal injury to my neck. But this is the price one pays to keep fit.

I’m reminded of the time in November 2021 when the Gloucestershire Football Association contacted me on a Thursday to inform me that a woman wanted to join our Friday walking football group and asked me if I could send her an email telling her all about us and the sport and suggesting she join us the following day. I duly did this and was keen to extol the virtues of walking football as a great means of keeping fit and healthy. Reading this made Helen even keener to join us and I welcomed her just hours later to our fold.

Imagine my consternation, therefore, when within three minutes of the kick-off I received the ball near the touchline and as the opposition defender big John Lord approached I decided to slip the ball past him with a bit of trickery, only to be unceremoniously upended with the crudest of fouls that left me writhing in agony with a dead leg. Through the pain I could hear someone say that it’s okay now I can get up as I’ve got my bloody free-kick. But what these heathens couldn’t understand was I was actually trying to play down my injury as I was aware that it possibly wasn’t making a great impression on our new female recruit who’d been told by yours truly what a great sport it was for keeping fit. Indeed, as the match progressed and I got slower and slower until inevitably I had to spend the majority of the second half in goal, I did so by causing as little fuss as possible so that my predicament would go unobserved by her.

At the final whistle I deliberately remained behind chatting to anyone who was available so that Helen didn’t then see me take about twenty minutes to negotiate the walk from the pitch to the car park that normally takes less than a jiffy when one doesn’t have the incumbrance of a dead leg. Fortunately, my bravery in the face of adversity met with success as Helen became a regular and solid member of our group for the next year until she moved over the bridge. And I don’t mean, due to our advanced years, the rainbow bridge. She was the youngest anyway, at fifty. She has since painfully discovered for herself that injuries are part and parcel of our robust play. For in that time she has picked up a couple of black eyes, from when balls have smacked her in the face, and an injury to her abdomen.

Someone else had expressed interest a few weeks earlier and asked if he could come along to watch us play the week before he planned to don his boots. He had not long returned from a holiday abroad and looked bronzed and athletic. Probably late-fifties. When I glanced at him after about ten minutes of our match, the tan had been invaded by the white hue of shock and his pose no longer appeared languid and confident. More taut with fear, if anything. These impressions proved to be correct as at half-time when I sought him out he had disappeared, one of our players saying that he had seen him beat a hasty retreat to the car park on about the 16 minute mark.