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Advice & Anecdotes from a Walking Footballer/Senior Player
My partner considers us mean calling my occasional strike partner Losing Derek. But he even titles himself that on our What’s App group. We already had three Dereks when he joined in 2017. Unlike our midfielder Steve Prince who has two Daleks he bought at auction years ago and keeps in his garage.
We have Mars Bar Derrick, because he gave out Mars Bars after matches (although now through economic necessity this has been downscaled to a chocolate chip cookie), Rovers Derek, because of his Gashead affiliations and just Derek.
In Losing Derek’s first 17 matches with us he was never on the winning side out of the two I select. On the 18th occasion he finally triumphed and was chaired from the pitch.
The name stuck. Although it was suggested, if his winning streak continued, in the fashion of the late pop star Prince we might then call him ‘The Player Formerly Known As Losing Derek’.
We get looks when we call him Losing Derek in the pub. This was especially the case when our injury prone Catalonian striker Juan called out from the bar to our table through a packed pub, ‘Hey Loser Derek, is it a pint or a half you want?’ What makes this all the more humorous is that Juan is a freelance man of the cloth so he might have had some explaining to do had a member of any of his congregations been present.
Jonty Morgan Humour Sampler 