There aren’t many similarities between Wayne Rooney and myself. I don’t have a partner called Colleen, for example. Nor do I bear more than a passing resemblance to Shrek. And I tend not to go for women who are two and a half times my age (I’m 51).
Where there is a resemblance, however, is on the football front. We both play passionate, committed football and we both have a top drawer that’s chock-full of some of the most outrageous footballing skills you’ll see this side of the Copacabana.
This occurred to me as I replayed in my head my first-half performance at the weekend. Like Alan Hansen, I have an almost photographic recall of every incident from every match I’ve ever played in, and in Sunday’s half-game I thought I gave a particularly delightful exposition of the footballing arts.
Forget the simple, short pass from Adrian that I couldn’t control. Ignore my failure to mark the attacker who went on to sneak behind the defence and score the opposition’s second goal. Put out of your mind that ridiculous half-lunge with my chest as I bore in on goal – an incident which, if handled with greater agility, might have produced a first goal for the Casuals.
No. Cast your mind back to a small vignette some 25 minutes into the game. Juan took the ball and passed out to me on the left. The right-back, a player of considerable experience, was bearing down on me. In the flick of an eyelid I executed a Cruyff turn, shimmied past my opponent, advanced five yards and laid the ball on to an admiring Andy Doyle.
I could have sworn I heard an involuntary “Ole” from Paul Sankey on the touchline.
So next time Manchester United are in London for a weekend game, don’t be surprised if you see a young man with troll-like features down at the Hawker, applauding the Casuals from the touchline. Off the pitch we may not have much in common, but there’s still a lot that we veterans can teach the superstars of tomorrow.
Monday, November 20, 2006
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…
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…
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