Tag: FIFA World Cup 2026

Facing up to the Gorges of Eternal Peril: to sequel or not to sequel?

This week, we’re exploring what goes on before a book even begins to take shape; and in this case, what’s leading to the sequel of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player, out some time later this year. The story so far… I’ve been prescribed a course of pills and some time on a football pitch; I’ve faced up to the terrors of the weigh in and am about to face, in this third and final exploration of what leads to a sequel, an uncomfortable truth. 

“OK, thanks.” I stepped tentatively onto the weighing contraption, not daring to look down into the Gorge of Eternal Peril and held my breath, waiting for Thumper to call out the answer. “What did he say?” I asked a neighbour presumably called Roger, given that was the name on the back of his football shirt. Thumper’s announcement had been lost in the swell of the bunnies’ banter and cheering which had surfaced when the results of the season’s efforts had been announced.

“What did you say?” Roger returned my question, fidgeting with his hearing aid.

“I said… never mind, it’s not important right now.”

“What did you say?” repeated Roger. I felt I was about to enter an infinite loop of conversational dread so made my apologies and followed the ragtag and bobtail teams out towards the pitches.  It turns out that I’ve been allocated a place on the blue team, on the account of my wearing a blue t-shirt which seemed pretty reasonable.  What seemed less reasonable was the sight of several teams limbering up across the pitches, showing off their ball skills and in several cases, scampering sidewards along the touch line, flapping their arms up and down in time to an inaudible sound track.  This looked like a lot of serious exercise (not a problem) in preparation for some serious games of football on what looked like some very long pitches (definitely a problem).

“Is that the pitch we’re playing on?” I enquired of the blue team captain, Vienna, nodding to the expanse of astroturf ahead of us, stretching off into the night sky.  He nodded in return.  “Seems rather long doesn’t it?”

“You’ll get used to it in no time.”  I thought this was highly unlikely.  Running the length of a football pitch was something I had veered away from for many, many years for long-buried reasons and the idea that I would somehow gloss over that history and comfortably take to navigating this very long pitch seemed implausible.  I was then immediately hit on the back of my head by a stray football which some over-eager rabbit had kicked in my direction without alerting me to its wind speed or direction of travel.

The ball had the effect of knocking my glasses off and all at once my inability to see anything at all without them rudely reminded me exactly why football pitches and their assorted paraphenalia of banter, balls and bollocks had not been graced with my presence for over half a century.  “That’s it,” I thought.  “I’m off. I can’t see a thing, I’ve got no ball skills, I’ve no idea what’s happening on the pitch and I feel like the ground is opening up in front of me. I’m off.” Yet another Gorge of Eternal Peril loomed ever clearer with each passing second, despite my impaired vision.  My GP was going to be informed that this prescription definitely wasn’t going to be working for me. And if it meant that my research into the sequel of my footballing confessionals had come to end, then so be it. At least my legs wouldn’t get broken in the meantime.

“Come on, you’re on!” Vienna called over to me enthusiastically. “We’re one player down! We need you!” I was temporarily flattered. I looked at the ever-expanding pitch; I looked at the welcoming club house; I looked at my car. Should I stay or should I go?

You can find out later this year whether this tale gets told. But in the meantime why not check the book that started it all here:

Confessions of an Ageing Football Player

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.

Come and listen to all the action on our podcasts here!

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Behind the Scenes of a Football Resurrection: facing up to the Gorge of Eternal Peril

This week, we’re exploring what goes on before a book even begins to take shape; and in this case, what’s leading to the sequel of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player, out some time later this year. The story so far… I’ve been prescribed a course of pills and some time on a football pitch…

My blood pressure was normal (for me), my hopes higher than normal (for me) and the astroturf pitches beckoned. What could possibly go wrong? Well, pretty much everything.

Before being let loose on the astroturf pitches, we were to be rounded up like Flopsy, Mopsy and Bobtail and subjected to various measurements and assessments.  “How old are you?” asked by our coach, Jessica, was the first question to fend off. Much was made of a couple of members’ ages.  “Look at Frank!” said Flopsy, “He’s the oldest here at 62!”   “Nevermind Frank – look at Fred, he’s 64, he’s the oldest now!” countered Mopsy.   Cue much appreciative muttering and banter.  I find out later that footie ‘banter’ is in a class all of its own but before that awakening, I’m nudged to give an answer to the age question. Without wanting to be too obtuse, the question “How old are you?” Isn’t that straightforward and I’m always reminded of my grandmother, Bubs, responses to that question.

“One day I feel 50; another day I feel 60 and today I feel 70,” she’d say without letting on whether feeling 70 was a problem or not.  And she’d finish off with a flourish:  ‘What age do you want me to be, dear?”  which struck me as a perfectly decent response to this particular Starter-for-10 question.  

I’ve recently come across the concept of the bio-age.  This is a figure the  computer in our local gym generates for you after you have experienced  various tests on their e-gym contraptions:  pieces of kit which push and pull you, alter the weight you’re pushing or pulling against, stretch you in ways you thought impossible and generally make your life temporarily miserable.  The better news is that after these humiliations the computer generates your “Bio-Age” for you.  It works out how old your upper body is (compared of course with the ‘normal’ population, how old your lower body is (ditto) and how old your metabolism is (ditto ditto).  It then averages out these numbers (of course) and comes up with your “Bio-Age” – which in my case, and of immense importance this evening at the ManvSFat weigh in – is… well, that’s my business right now.

This is a particular pleasing sensation given it bears little relation to my actual ‘Bio-Age’ if you were to find out my date of birth.  “But hey,” as Bubs might have said, “what age do you want me to be?” In the face of all the gathering footie banter, I decided not to answer Jessica’s question with another question but offered her one version of my Bio-Age which she was happy to accept, nodding in approval and noticeably impressed.  Tapping it into her I-Pad, she asked “and what is your weight?”  She asked this in a way which reminded me of the Monty Python film, Holy Grail, where the Bridge Keeper over the Gorge of Eternal Peril asks King Arthur “And what… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” 

Having navigated the problematic question of my age, I had suddenly turned the corner and was facing my own Gorge of Eternal Peril questions: that of my weight.  I have to dig up and channel my inner King Arthur before I can answer her. The room seemed to go quiet although it probably didn’t.  One overweight bunny in the background muttered about the difference between mass and weight (see what I mean about footie banter?) and another in the corner argued whether it mattered if the weighing machine was on a hard floor or on a carpet.  It then turned into a debate about whether your weight depended on where you were in the room, where we were in relation to the equator and whether we were due a full moon or not. I took a deep breath and lied.  

“Are you sure?” She quizzed me in a way which suggested she didn’t quite believe me.  I nodded confidently.  “Exactly?”  I nodded more vigorously this time. “OK, well, we do weigh ins every week, so you can start tonight over there.” She pointed to a queue of elderly bunnies queuing in front of of an innocous piece of flatbed kit on the floor which was connected by a length of cable to another innocent piece of machinery which another bevy of bunnies was gather around.  Cottontail stood on the platform, Thumper called out ‘One hundred and Eighty!” as if he were at a darts match and the bevy cheered as one. “Over there,” Jessica reminded me, somewhat unnecessarily I thought, pointing to the biggest question of the night.

“OK, thanks.” I stepped tentatively onto the weighing contraption, not daring to look down into the Gorge of Eternal Peril and held my breath, waiting for Thumper to call out the answer.

Confessions of an Ageing Footballer Hoodie

Confessions of an Ageing Footballer Hoodie

 

Available in any size from S to 5XL and in a myriad of colours, the Confessions of an Ageing Footballer Hoodie is an ideal way to warm up and cool down from the exertions required of participating in major international football tournaments.

Front image: Confessions of an Ageing Footballer Book front cover.

Back image: choose from Sven Goran Eriksson, Bobby Charlton or Luis Suarez on Subbuteo bases.  George Best image also available, although baseless.

Please contact us with your requirements and any questions.

 

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Facing the Silent Killer: Behind the Scenes of a Football Resurrection

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

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.

Come and listen to all the action on our podcasts here!

£8.99
Shop now