I found God - and then I found veterans football

I worship the Lord Jesus with all my heart and all my soul. In him, through him, and by him, we are all redeemed in the oneness of his unyielding majesty. Only now do I understand that Jesus came down to earth to sanctify our sins and to redeem us from evil.

Fellow Casuals, I took the opportunity afforded by the cancellation of yesterday's game against Teddington to welcome Jesus into my heart by paying a visit to my local church. I had been a sinner - mired in concupiscence, consorting with painted jades, confusing my teammates by looking in the wrong direction when taking throw-ins.

But I have vowed to sin no longer. Henceforth I will bask in the refulgence of the Lord Jesus’s glory every Sunday from 10.30 in the morning...

Let the above ramblings be a lesson to you to be on your guard the next time a game is cancelled on Sunday morning. Too many cancellations, and you're liable to end up talking and thinking like one of those characters in A Pilgrim's Progress (example: "This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended: it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond." Could John Bunyon be talking about the Dekker sports ground after a heavy downpour?)

That's because people with little to divert them before lunchtime on Sunday end up doing strange, unpredictable things like visiting the municipal dump or going shopping for Christmas presents or, most perplexing of all, going to church. The devil, my friends, finds work for idle veterans.

And once you’re in church, and the thurible gets swinging, and the incense starts to billow, and the candles flicker, and the bells start to jingle-jangle, and the priest intones, and the footsteps echo through the canyons of your mind… Before you know it you’re overcome and you’re beginning to think that maybe spending a winter’s Sunday morning standing up and kneeling down and sitting down in a nice warm church is actually preferable to running about like the proverbial fly with a blue bottom in the cold rain while being abused by your fellow Casuals and hacked down by your opponents. Well, it isn’t.

Some of you may indeed be of a religious persuasion, so I won’t keep going on about it. But just remember this. At the hour of your death, as your entire life flashes through your mind, what would you prefer to look back on: a succession of Sunday mornings spent hobbling around to no obvious effect over a patch of grass while your partner seethes quietly at home, or a life inspired by the example of Jesus, a life led with dignity, fortitude and respect for your fellow human being? No contest, really.