This is my last season.
Definitely.
I've only been saying THAT for about 5 years. But, here it is. I'm nearly 42 for feck's sake and I'm still playing professional football. Well, kind of professional and kind of still playing. I'm a goalkeeper so apparently I'm like insurance salemen...I can stay in the game til I'm in my 50s but I've been telling Carey for the last 5 years that this is it. It's always the same stuff. We get to the pre-season. She rakes up all that pish about me quitting the game and how I'm too old and how I could be the father of half the first team which actually was the truth last year. The average age of our midfield was 23, my back four averaged at 22 only because we had Tony playing centre-half and he's 34 and the guy upfront, a cocky wee prick called Jason, is barely 19.
Football's not a game for pensioners but fuck me, I'm pissed off listening to these wee dicks asking me if my heating allowance has kicked in every time we're warming up before a match. What do they know? Have they frozen their balls off in Leipzig with a Swiss referee who thinks the Geneva Convention means that East German teams should have a penalty within the last 10 minutes of the first-half of their home leg in a UEFA Cup tie?
Have they faced down Alex Ferguson when he's nipped in to "congratulate" our plucky obstinacy for denying Mark Hughes and Ryan Giggs up until the 82nd minute of an FA Cup game even when he KNEW the Welsh wizard had gone down softer than a Rowantrees fruit pastille for that penalty? Fergie, eh? One of the immortals until I told him Giggs was a a cheatin' bastard. ( Which, to be honest, a lot more punters outside of footy have discovered!)
But I was sitting there a few weeks ago, stuck on the old beige leather 3-seater, a cold one in my hand, the remnants of rogan josh soiling the plate, Carey watching some arsehole thinking he's George Michael on Britain's Not-In-Any-Shape-Or-Form-Got Talent wondering for like the four millionth time about quitting the game and then it happened.
It was like Mark Lawrenson appeared out of the sky on a flaming pie and asked me...
" What the fuck are you doing this for?"
So that was it.
Simple.
This is my last season ever in football and I'm now going to record it on a blog.
When I started as a pro there were no blogs, no mobiles, no e-mail. That's mainly cos nobody gave a shit but now we tell everybody everything even if they don't want to hear it sooooooooo
............stick with me as I take you through the last season of my career.
Just to be sure though, I'm not Premiership...not even Coca-Cola but I love football and I've spent more time on a pitch than I have with Carey in Tescos so if you're interested in what it's like to stick the boots and gloves on and stand tall against every wee shite who thinks he's the next Messi then...
come along! There's a full moon shining bright and...
...this is my last season...
...ever!
