I love football. I always have. It has been a sizeable part of me since I was a diddy thing. There are so many things I could talk about, par example:

• The 2010 World Cup
• My new sense of football perspective
• Podcasts
• My beloved Southampton’s chances of promotion from League One
• My steadily declining opinion of the Premier League
• Whether or not to buy a season ticket for Fulham this year

But this is pub talk. If I tried to cover everything then I’d cover nothing. Plus, this kind of stuff can get really quite boring for those who don’t care about football, they do exist you know, weirdos. With this in mind I have decided to write about a facet of my football life that is at least mildly accessible

My football playing career

Oh yes! and what a career it was. Dizzying highs, sickening lows and bog standard middles. First of all, we should get one thing clear

I am awful at football

Mmhmm. I was one of those kids. Loved the game, couldn’t play it for toffee, not properly anyway. Any skill I had was attained via sheer dogged persistence rather than any natural flair for the game. I was Rock Lee.

The Springtime of Youth!

The story of my career starts (and ends) in Netley Abbey. The village I grew up in. Netley Abbey is a lovely spot, situated in the suburbs of Southampton. Home to the world famous Abbey Ruins, which despite what you might think is actually an old ruined Abbey. And lest we forget the Royal Victoria Country Park, site of the old military hospital during World War II. If you’re looking for a quiet village for a holiday this summer then look no further than Netley Abbey, that’s Netley Abbey. Sorry, I seem to have wandered a tad.

I lived on a middle of the road estate called Ingleside. It’s really quite a charming name now I think about it, kinda took it for granted when I was an idiot (child). All of my friends lived in and around Ingleside so games of football would start ad nauseum. I was very lucky because I lived right next a nice large patch of grass about half the size of a normal football pitch. Now it did have a footpath carving its way through the middle of it, but that only served to make things more exciting. Slide tackles were like Russian Roulette. Well they would be if I did them but being a total wuss I never really commited to a challenge.

The pitch, such as it was, was surrounded by people’s back fences. For us they were actually very robust goal nets. We would regularly smash people’s fences to bits in the name of the beautiful game. It was never intended, just collateral damage. I did a blog a while ago about our adventures smashing people’s property so I’ll refer you to that (link!) and move on.

This pitch was where my fledgling career began. Chasing the ball around, no guile, no grace. But hey, we were 9, bugger off. We spent the majority of our time playing a game I can’t remember the name of, but it involved 1 goalkeeper and a bunch of kids taking shots. We’d set it up so there were two professional teams playing and we’d imagine a game, shouting the names of our favourite players and such. It was brilliant.

As we played we kinda sussed which players we were most like. For example the little kid Stew emerged as Andy Townsend. This was mainly because he just tackled people. He was quite good at it but that was it. Tackle tackle tackle. I don’t know what Stew is doing now but I don’t think he’s an ITV pundit. He could probably do it, the only qualification necessary that I can see is to have a face.

Anyway, for some reason it emerged that I was

Teddy Sheringham

Terry Shedingham

Now our rationale at the time was that I had a tendancy to toe punt the ball and subsequently hit it fucking hard. Now I really don’t why it was Teddy Sheringham. He was quite a cultured player and never one to just lamp it. On reflection I think I’m more like

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

That's me. Definitely.

That’s more like it. He was pretty good, didn’t do *that* much but in the words of Alan Partridge “had a foot like a traction engine”. On numerous occasions I would get frustrated and or bored and just leather it. It didn’t always (or often) go in but by christ it went somewhere far away. Over a fence normally. Though it’s a do or die mentality, if a shot of that raw brutal power goes in from distance, it’s a thing of beauty. I seemed to be pretty good at crossing too. Well sort of. Not really.

That’s how it was for what seemed like decades, in a good way. We played football pretty much every available second of our lives. Kicking balls over fences and into bushes, scoring screamers and such, happy days. If I gave those years to Peter Kay, he’d get a good 25 minutes of material out of it. But it didn’t stay this way, back off Peter.

Up until now I’d only played casual football. You know, small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Rush goalie. Two at the back, three in the middle, four up front, one’s gone home for his tea. Beans on toast? Possibly, don’t quote me on that. Marvellous. But being a football fan you know there is more to it than that. Not much mind, but a bit.

Occasionally we would play on full size pitches, rarely with goalposts and perish the thought, A NET. Once you get a taste for that you can’t go back. We would always have silly knock around football but we all yearned for something a bit more. Something with rules and scores and numbered shirts and oranges and shouting parents. It was time to join a team.

I realise now that this blog is quite a bit longer than I thought it would be, so I’ll wrap it up for now and continue the next chapter (Going Pro) in the not too distant future. If you’d like to go on holiday to Netley Abbey, then go here for more details. You never know, you might bump into me. *

* You won’t bump into me, I live in London.**

** If you do live in London you might bump into me, I’m always looking at my phone while I walk. I’m a danger to myself. Beware.