Why the Casuals all need Edgar Davids goggles

Have you noticed how many times Dinton play on blindingly sunny Sunday mornings? It seems like every other game unfolds to the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky, as an occasional sailing boat scuds past on the Thames (that phrase © Paul Sankey). Yesterday was a case in point.

Like my fellow Casual Paul Stafford, I sometimes long for one of those games played in sheets of driving rain, with players falling about all over the place because they’ve misjudged the arrival of a ball that’s invariably lodged itself in a quagmire near the centre spot. The sort of game where you dread being taken off because you know you’ll freeze to death on the touchline.

I remember one home game in the depths of winter four or five seasons ago (God knows how we made it onto the pitch – it was during that period when the groundsman would call the game off if there was too much dew on the grass). Bitter cold over the preceding few days had turned the ground rock solid, with a coating of ice on top.

Add to that a heavy Sunday morning downpour about an hour before the game, and you had all the ingredients for an extremely distressing 90 minutes in conditions that wouldn’t get past the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Sheer bliss!

But my point about the sunny weather, apart from the fact that it’s just plain weird at this time of year, is that when you’re out on the wing it often means you hardly get a look-in. If your colleague with the ball is staring into the sun, it’s virtually impossible for him to distinguish between one silhouette and another.

One solution would be to get the Hawker Centre to reposition the pitches so that teams play directly into the sun. Another option would be the construction of an Old Trafford-style three-tier stand to obscure the sunlight. A third, and more viable alternative would be to get all those Casuals playing on the non-sunny side of the pitch to wear Edgar Davids-style goggles for half the game.

Responsibility for looking after the goggles would, of course, fall to the person charged with looking after the water bottles…