I’ve always had a thing for my elders. As a kid, I’d sooner hang out with my nan than my schoolmates, and as a teenager I got into Gardeners’ World in quite a big way. So it won’t come as a surprise to learn that back in the autumn of 2021, I accepted a random invitation to join a veterans’ football team at the age of 35.
The Comics – as that team are known – have been around a fair while. My understanding is that they were founded between the wars, though which ones I can’t say. In any case, a consensus had formed – prompted by a spate of hospitalisations – that some fresh legs were required. When the team’s manager suddenly decided it would be OK to use players as young as 35, so long as they were rubbish, he went out on the hunt and found me in the toilet of a gastropub in New Malden.
