26. WHEN SATURDAY’S GONE By Jonaldo

Ex-Pros And Senior Football

I have been involved with walking/senior football for eight and a half years and one of the questions I get asked more than most is why don’t many ex-professionals take up the game?

My simple answer is that a lot of them appear to be crocked. For instance, a few weeks ago, our centre-back, John Lord, who combines football with his other passion of being a Labour councillor, told me that on his rounds he got chatting to a former Bristol Rovers player, similar age to me. He told him about our senior/walking football and said he was most welcome to join us. But the ex-pro then told John that his knee was totally f##### due to his playing career. Indeed, he was a recipient of a disability benefit as a consequence.

I have heard similar things about other erstwhile professionals. They usually have chronic arthritis caused by injuries they suffered which weren’t  allowed to heal naturally as they were masked by pain killing injections so they could make the line-up for an important game and their investment. The management and directors concerned about the here and now and not whether it would bugger up the player’s chances of continuing to play the game in his senior years.

I can only conclude from these observations that us non-pros taxed our bodies far less enabling us to last the pace better and make the grade at over-fifties football. I recall saying to Mike Williams, our eldest player who will be an astonishing 84 years old in three weeks, a few years ago that he was born in the same year as one of the all time greats, Pele. In Pele’s last years before his passing, he was unfortunately confined to a wheelchair. I said to the effervescent left-back Mike that I bet he never thought that one day he would be better than his contemporary Pele.

It’s almost like these former pros fought in a war for us and now want to retire into obscurity nursing their wounds and never wanting to get in close vicinity with that dreaded ball ever again. (With some players it was evident that this aversion to that important spherical object was displayed well before they hung up their boots.)

Maybe Ex-Pros simply don’t want to play football again having lived and breathed it for so much of their formative years, all the while studied under a microscope by thousands in the ground. Playing the game into one’s senior years engenders no excitement for them as they have lived the dream. For them there are other avenues to explore such as talking about the game as soccer pundits. But it is revealing, that we never see them walking about. They are always safely ensconced behind some desk to pontificate upon what we are watching and for all we know when the cameras switch to events on the pitch a whole array of medical paraphernalia could be being wheeled into the studio to hook these ailing erstwhile players up with their necessary bodily and life support mechanisms.

I have encountered several ex-pros who when walking football is mentioned disparagingly respond with a comment to the effect that they couldn’t play football at a reduced pace, drawing upon their heydays to fuel this putdown. But then drink their pint at a slower rate than in their prime and reach for their wallet to replenish it in such a pedestrian manner that an octogenarian gunslinger in the old wild west would greatly fancy their chances.