Mercurials, Broken Bones and 15 Minute Hat-Tricks

Despite kicking a ball around since I could barely walk, I never considered playing Sunday league football, especially as a teenager…

I was in my early-twenties and having the odd kick about and 5-a-side games with mates while watching the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, life was good…

What a World Cup by the way… the songs, the goals, the atmosphere, and those bloody vuvuzelas… god those vuvuzelas…

Don’t forget the Panini sticker album as standard, which never gets completed… maybe it’s just me who always gets about 90% through them…

Once Tshabalala banged that first goal in for the hosts it was pretty much party time for a month of the summer.

That was the first time I even considered playing competitive 11-a-side, and after a few chats with mates they convinced me to start training with a Sunday league team… Decent bunch of lads, not bad at football either.

“and those bloody vuvuzelas… god those vuvuzelas…”

Thrown in at the deep end starting my first few Sunday league matches as a winger of all things… It might not seem like a big deal but I never considered myself good enough to play Sunday league, but once I banged that first goal (be it from a few yards out) I wondered why I didn’t start playing sooner.

Back then, I was the only player on that team that wasn’t wearing black boots. Then again, the average age of the team had to be mid-to-late thirties… So when I rocked up with my bright pink nike mercurials I’m surprised I didn’t receive any flack from the older players.

Then the injuries started…

Only a month into the regular season… I landed after jumping to header a ball and it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my lower back. I turned around in agony whilst holding my back, only to find that there was no-one within 6 feet of me. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. Just like that, I ended up in a heap on the grass, unable to get back up… The opposing team’s sideline came on with some freeze spray, but that was about as useful as British parliament trying to sort out Brexit…

After the game, probably through adrenaline, I eventually made it home, and after about an hour I realised that I couldn’t feel my legs. Essentially paralysed from the waist down and bedridden for the best part of a week. It turned out to be a bulged disc that had hit a nerve and caused so much damage that I would end up with severe back issues to this day. Oh the joys…

After a few months I managed to get back playing again but it was never the same. The loss of feeling in my legs made it incredibly difficult to play a sport that primarily USES YOUR LEGS! But the doctors said it was irreparable and could only be managed but would never fully go away, so I accepted that, but I wasn’t going to stop playing…

The following season after helping out a mate manage and train a local youth team, I was convinced to join a local team formerly known as Pittington FC (now Belmont WMC). That’s when I had my best season as a player. Amazing bunch of lads and the pitch was in the same village where I lived at the time, ideal…

I ended up banging in 15+ goals that season (minus penalties, before you think anything), averaging a goal every 60 mins, ending the year second top scorer. I even managed to score a hat-trick in less than 15 minutes. Again, a massive deal for me… Two seasons and two promotions later was when my next major injury happened…

Ladies, gents, giraffes and non-binary mammals… that was my left shoulder back in October 2013. SNAP!

Not for the faint-hearted, but surprisingly enough it didn’t hurt as much as you’d think… It all came from an innocuous fall when chasing down a lost ball where the defender just cleared it before I went over the top of him. I couldn’t get my arms out in time so all of my weight came down straight onto my shoulder.

I walked to the sidelines and we had already used our allotted subs, so I wanted to shake it off and get back on the pitch. I figured that I’d just dislocated it so I considered asking someone to “pop it back in”… just as well I didn’t. I ended up going back onto the pitch until the end of the game with a “bad shoulder”, then when the ref blew for full time someone said it was the best they’d seen me play… Maybe I didn’t look so bad when I wasn’t running around like a headless chicken…

Anyway, two surgeries and a few months later I was back playing again. Since then, I’ve also broken my wrist (again football related, surprise, surprise…) and I was on the end of a potential career ending tackle when I offered to play at center back of all positions.

“Maybe I didn’t look so bad when I wasn’t running around like a headless chicken…”

It was a case of scraping 11 lads together with a team full of midfielders, and I fancied a change… We were solid for the first 20 minutes of that game in defence. Two 6’3” lads heading and clearing everything out. After a while the match calmed down, we were passing it about and controlling the game from the back making it look easy, unlike Arsenal…

Then my partner at the back played me the ball and the whole pitch had opened up in front of me. it was like the parting of the sea… I could see a good 20-30 yards in front of me to run into… So, like a young Harry Maguire I set off and started picking up pace. I shrugged off one half-hearted tackle and was about to thread it through for the striker, then CRUNCH!!!

I was hit with a sliding tackle from my left blind side. I never saw it coming… It could only be described as a tackle to try and stop the man, as the ball was still rolling away ahead of me… I went down like a sack of spuds and I had never felt pain like it. Broken bones are painful, but this was something else… It turned out that the lad had gone in studs up on the inside of my right ankle whilst my foot was planted on the ground, whilst I had momentum going forward…

I had torn two ligaments in my right ankle, and THAT was the point where I seriously considered packing in playing football.

Nevertheless, I recovered several months later and I played on for a few more years, managing the back pain as best I could… through regular-ish exercise, a hint of codeine and a dash of tramadol.

Then in June of 2019, I decided that enough was enough and fully retired from the game. Playing football was becoming increasingly more difficult when you lose feeling in your legs periodically. Not to mention Sunday league these days seems to have more younger lads playing now than it used to… or maybe I’m just getting old…

That brings us to the end of this blog, and my last competitive 11-a-side game before retirement. A fans match at Hartlepool United’s Victoria Park (or for sponsorship reasons “The Super 6 Stadium”). A game in which I can say with confidence that I controlled from center midfield, alongside Pools’ manager (at the time) Craig Hignett.

A fitting end to a football career (if you can call it that) which was topped off with one of my best goals to date… Who knows if I’ll ever play a competitive game again, but for now I’m enjoying my Sunday morning lie ins…

Check out the video below and enjoy this beauty of a goal…

I wish Steve Bruce would stop calling me…