New Season - New Team

So a new season - and a new team! Having taken the decision to prolong my playing career I follwed some good advice from my best pal, Damien, and was put in touch with a Vets (veterans) team by another friend, Phil "JR" Hartley. I felt quite optimistic after chatting on the phone to 'Lev', the Vet's manager who assured me that all the boys (men surely(!) this is a vets team afterall!) were good chaps and I put the phone down desperate for the season to begin.

I marketed myself as "a superb shot stopper with a tendency to get lobbed from the halfway line." and this thankfully appeared to have gone under (or over) Lev's radar/bar. You see it's not easy being a Sunday morning football goalkeeper. Everyone watches the football on the telly and gets to see top quality keepers who seem to hardly ever put a foot wrong - unless you're David De Gea. And of course they all look much smaller on the TV. I think people forget that bit. Now, I'm no dwarf but at 5ft 10 I'm not exactly Petr Cech either so there have admittedly been a couple of occassions when I've been done. From distance. Ok, alright - been done from the halfway line.

I'm not making excuses - the first one was a gift as I was on my penalty spot when Mr number 10 launched a shot straight from kick-off. The sinking feeling is akin to that moment when you know you've been caught doing something you really shouldn't and it's too late to do anything about it. The vow of never being caught like that again seemed very hollow when tragedy struck for a second time two months later - to the same opposition! This time it was our kick-off  so surely it had to be ok to stand on the six yard line??!!

Um apparently not....the ball goes back to to our number nine and it shanks off his knee and goes back to one of them just inside his own half. How he struck it so sweetly I'll never know to this day - but it went very high and caught a friendly wind pocket and just sailed and sailed over my distraught hand in to the top corner. Dispair and disgrace again! I would've retired there and then given the chance. The worst part of it was that I was the bloody player/manager. Talk about losing the dressing room.

No one remembers that you go on to have a stormer of a season and pull off some truly unbelievable saves and ultimately guide the team to a respectable mid table 'first season' finish. The ribbing and banter was fun for a while but in the end I just wanted someone to say something positive! The eventual folding of ALC FC was a sad but inevitable day and I guess I thought that at the age of 36 that that was that....