You might be familiar with the series of Tennis Player confessionals we’ve been publishing for a few years now. They started as a one-off after one ‘Andy Murray’ won Wimbledon in 2013 and, fast forwarding 12 years later, will be completed this autumn when he attempts finally, to win the US Open as the swan song in his career. I never intended the original Confessions of a Tennis Player to turn into a mini-series, but that’s what it did: and I’m now faced with a similar challenge with another in the series, Confessions of an Ageing Football Player (note, not Footballer: the reason for this title will become clearer in the fullness of time.)
To be truthful (a dubious concept given our brand strap line (The Truth, the Whole Truth and Anything but the Truth), the motivation for this sequel has not been due to a narrative cliff hanger at the end of the first book; it’s not as if I intended to create a load of loose ends which needed tidying up before abandoning the whole project, although there is some Truth in that. Another Truth is that the book ended in our hero winning the World Cup on a solitary high back in 2014 so there was not much further I could have taken it. “The only way is down” as D-Ream might not have sung then, but might have done so more recently given last year’s re-election of the Labour Party in the UK.
No, the motive for the resurrection of this story was more sobering: the steadfast refusal of my blood pressure to drop out of its usual hypertensive habit into a region the doctor calls normal. I have to say I find the whole notion of normal blood pressure or normal BMI or normal anything when it comes to our bodies really problematic. The figures we’re bombarded with every day warning us of our imminent death and decay are invariably population statistics from which we are told we are either normal, not normal or just plain weird. The medical fraternity have a huge battery of ways now of telling how un-normal we all are and how problematic our lack of normalcy is.
In my case, my lack of normalcy means I have a silent killer lurking around my being; something that could strike at any time, without any warning or any immediate or obvious cause. A kind of biological stealth bomber which, due to its invisibility, is undetectable and there’s nothing you can do to stop it in its tracks as you can’t see where it’s coming from. I have to say, when doctors talk about silent killers, it tends to stop me in my tracks. It’s one of those narrative gambits which stop the conversation stone dead as there’s nothing you can say in return to someone who’s told you that you have a silent killer somewhere about your person. You can’t ask ‘where?’ Because it’s silent; you can’t say ‘prove it’ because it’s invisible and you can’t say ‘I’d like a second opinion’ because once a silent presence has established itself inside your head, there’s no shutting it up. It becomes very noisy, this so called silent killer and no number of other opinions are going to quell its whispering and ghostly presence. The only thing you can say is “OK doc, you win, give me the pills.” and as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ve taken the first step towards a life time of constant pill taking. I’ve also been recommended to join a local football project, ManvFat which is intended to help me lose weight, get fitter and presumably reduce the chances of the silent killer making itself heard. But it’s too late for that: its presence is established and there’s not much I can do now to de-establish it.
Other than to use the opportunity to write a sequel of course. Life is nothing if it’s not a lot of research opportunities to write your next book, so with that in mind last night I tentatively pulled on my new knee length football socks, slipped in a couple of shin guards and tied up my new football boots laces ready to face a new group of potential pals and adversaries in the form of the ManVFat football community of North Hykeham. My blood pressure was normal (for me), my hopes higher than normal (for me) and the astroturf pitches beckoned. What could possibly go wrong?
Confessions of an Ageing Football Player
73 – nil! Those were the days: moments of glory on the school playing field on a foggy Wednesday afternoon when the final whistle went and your school mates would gather around you, beaming their small faces at you from every conceivable direction as they congratulated you fulsomely on the 23 hat tricks you have just completed in your team’s undeniable slaughter of the opposition…
The pages of this book will transport you back to those cherished early moments of your footballing endeavours. It offers a thrilling journey through the 2014 Brazil World Cup, a time when the possibilities for players of all skill levels felt boundless. At its heart, this is a 78-year-old man’s tale of determination and achievement in the sport he holds dear: Subbuteo Table Football.
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