youth football -your tales

Spike · October 8, 2006

inspired by the link on this thread and some of the tales there got me thinking of when I was a young un playing in the sunday leagues.

Have some great memories of playing amateur footy as a kid although not always on the pitch.

Our manager, Wilf, had a mate, Andy, who agreed to take us to games in the back of a transit van. All 13 of us crammed in. The most luxurious part of it was the fact that he'd put some old sofa in the back which 3 of the team would rush for whenever he pulled up at the designated meeting point. Getting to a match itself you could get an injury as there were live wires dangling down and sparking off but never like the time that Andy had to put the brakes on which resulted in the sofa hitting the back doors and the three lads on the sofa going flying out of the back and onto the road. Only for Andy to drive off.

One day Andy's van broke down so my mum took the entire team to the ground in a mini cooper estate. The chassis must have been no more than 3 inches off the road. Thank feck there were no speedbumps back then.

Our home ground used to be the place where the locals took their dogs for a walk and there were many a time you'd do a slide tackle and find yourself stinking of the s*** you'd gone through on the way. The changing room was also where the local alchies pissed away their lives and was fecking rank.

A lot of our aways were in various s*** tips in Crewe and at least once a season you'd get a lad who'd slide tackled through some broken glass and had to be taken to hossy.

We also used to get this really camp ref called Rodney who'd ref our games and his 'fitness' secret was to wear bin bags all week instead of socks. Even at work.

Ostrich Man · October 8, 2006

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