THE ANATOMY OF… A FIVE-A-SIDE TEAM
Meet the characters who ensure Five-a-side football is endured, not enjoyed.
Five-a-side football has nothing to do with football. Zip. Nada. Sweet FUCK ALL. Five-a-side is a thinly veiled but powerful expression of peak male frustration, anger, creeping decrepitude and shame.
The typical protagonists of a typical five-a-side game, as represented below, are dangerously disparate in skill, temperament, culture and empathy. They are bound by only one common and lingering consideration: ‘Why the fuck am I actually doing this?’
THE GOOD ONE
Fancy Dan. Show-off. Slippery little bastard. ‘Who the fuck brought him?’. The only technically gifted player is known by many pseudonyms, and is detested by all. Nutmegs, unerring shooting accuracy and the ability to make your average 40-year-old father of three question his place on this great unloving planet with just a flirty wiggle of his hips.
This is the chap who sets the standard neither you nor the rest of these portly gone-to-seed fannies will be able to meet. Worst of all, he’s frustratingly modest and polite, and even though he just rolled the ball backwards between your gaping legs for the second time tonight, he didn’t even smirk.
This slim dancing damnable little fudger is a mirror held brutally up to your bleary eyes, forcing you to ‘LOOK! LOOK AT YOURSELF! This was you once*, you could do this** once! JUST GO AND DIE!’ Oh I’ll die alright, but before I do, I’m going to clatter this likeable, talented and admittedly attractive young man so hard that it acutely winds me, and quite possibly breaks his ankle. See you in hell, son!
*It wasn’t.
**You couldn’t.
THE ORGANISER
Gathered all the players. Booked the pitch. Took the crippling risk of prepaying the fifty quid for the book and he’s bringing the bibs and ball. Your assumption that someone this committed must be skilled footballer is summarily dismissed when he clean-airs his first shot on goal and pulls his groin so brutally you swear you could hear a snap.
THE SURPRISE
Aerosmith Britain and Ireland 1997 Tour t-shirt ripped at the armpits, swimming shorts coming over the knee, long distance running shoes and a fully-stocked craft-beer-belly. Layered on top of this teetering mass of anti-athlete is a darkness to his eyes reflecting the grating, relentless wail of newborn twins who are more likely to drive the 75 bus home than they are to sleep through a nite. Yes, you say to yourself: chubster is here for the taking
Oh how wrong you were…
Seeing that lopsided mass of homo erectus dip, swivel, slide, jump, dart and sprint like, well, like an bonafide athlete, is so counter-intuitive that you’re rooted to the spot watching him humiliate men ten years his junior. And as he jogs back to your side of the pitch after slotting his 7th goal of the night, he throws you an almost imperceptibly haughty glance as if to say, ‘You thought I’d be shit, didn’t you?’ He’s right. You did.
And you know what actually? Aerosmith aren’t all that bad, either.
THE PAIN-MAGNET
I once played regular indoor football with a middle-aged Swedish man of fair to middling ability, but with a truly astounding ability to have the ball kicked directly into his face. Without fail, each time we played, a wayward punt would find its way arrowing with the unerring accuracy of a long-range surface-to-air missile towards this guy’s soft, yielding nose. It would all happen in delicious slow motion as if being captured by a top-of-the-range high-frame rate camera. Once the initial blast had been registered, and his head had snapped back into place post-impact, he’d turn around to all of us, wobbly and starry-eyed, little blue cartoon birds chirping gaily around his forehead, and while wearing an expression somewhere between anger and sadness, seem to ask, ‘But… why…? How…?’.
Curiously, too, the ball was always travelling at considerable velocity. He was never hit with a tap. Always a smash. A blooter. A full-blooded belt. It also says a lot about the male sex in particular, that one’s display of compassion on those occasions was invariably delayed by a 10–15 second period spent desperately trying to stifle uproarious laughter.
Of course, my former Swedish friend wasn’t and isn’t alone in his inexplicable and consistent misfortune. Find a five-a-side game and you’ll find fate’s punching bag. The sort of averagely equipped chap who for some reason known only to the Sibyl, ends up yelping and grimacing through 90 minutes of what should be enjoyable pastime with targets for testicles, studs imprinted on his shin, elbows softening his tender temples and a roll or three over a soft ankle. Nobody said life was going to be fair. They didn’t, however, say it would be this painful.
