Five A Side Woes by shoutingatco.ws

From the moment we stepped out onto the pitch, we knew we were out of our depth. Our opponents had their own kits, while our shirts weren’t even roughly the same colour. Their Astroturf boots contrasted sharply with our trainers – most still dazzling white from being out of the box for the first time.

We were as far from the Bernabéu as you could possibly get: The Oxford District 5-a-side league. We were desperate to prove that we could operate as a team, sneak a couple of wins, and take it from there. We emerged, six months later, barely talking and barely walking.

As with all great anecdotes, this starts with a chain e-mail at work. An invite to put a team together, which was met with a half-hearted commitment followed by immediate hope that we’d not get a full squad together. While five players could be on the pitch at any time, in theory you could have everyone you knew as a rolling substitute, swapping out whenever anyone was knackered. Our problem: we didn’t have enough friends for even a single substitute.

Preparations were thorough, so much so that even a notorious control freak like Jose Mourinho would have baulked at the ballache. Positions were divided up: Adam, at 19, the youngest, and therefore with the body least ravaged by alcohol, had free reign to run around up-front. The rest of us, with around 80 years of drinking experience between us, would struggle to maintain that pace.

Matt, the 16-stone brick shithouse would defend. As it happened, this meant hovering around the edge of the penalty area, while clumsily kicking lumps out of anyone who dared get close. Des (who dreams of being Xavi) and Rod (who dreams of being Clive Platt) took on midfield duties. This left me. In goal.

Back in the day, I’d played a fair bit in goal. Out on the pitch, I am, to put it bluntly, technically limited. I can see what I want the ball to do, but my feet conspire to clack the ball somewhere random. In goal I don’t have to run, don’t have to kick accurately (just hard) and crucially – I can spectate for most of the 30 minute game.

The office whiteboard was commandeered and transformed into something resembling one of Andy Gray’s toys, with arrows, directions and lines, supposedly explaining just what the hell we were supposed to do. Our real, non-theoretical tactics were far simpler: run at 100mph for the first 10 minutes, then spend the rest of the match too knackered to even bother tracking back.

Problems started as soon as we lost the ball – kicking off at least bought us a couple of minutes’ respite before they got stuck in. I stood wearing ill-advised shorts, in the cold, while a handful of Galacticos fired shots at me. Looking for anything resembling a defender, I realised I was all on my own. Two of them, actual athletes, against one of me, an actual idiot.

And then that moment arrived that separates me from real-life, proper sportsmen: I thought “Fuck this”, and decided that not being covered in welts and bruises from their shots was actually loads better than keeping the score “respectable”. Throwing myself onto the floor, even though nobody else has the stamina to jog back 50 yards to help out? No thanks.

Most weeks we got absolutely tonked, with our best hope being a consolation goal. Even the opposition were too embarrassed to celebrate, except for the one bell-end that nearly started a ruck by acting like he’d just scored on his England debut. C’mon mate, you’re dealing with five overweight office-dwellers, you’re not Pele.

Ten matches, nine defeats and one victory (by default, of course, they didn’t bother turning up), and a goal difference of -42 later, we learned an important lesson:

If you’re not going to win, don’t even bother trying. It’ll just hurt, and you’ll look stupid.

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