Old footballers never die, they just get slower & need more neoprene

In an attempt to recover some fitness after my post Bristol Half marathon slump I’ve started playing football with Sam who’s far too good & a guy called Justin, who for a white boy’s pretty good too. We play at the woodlands Stadium but don’t let the name deceive you. The pitch as level and evenly covered as a teneriffe pool table and the floodlights merely pinpoint the pockets. A mixed group of expats and Zambians play, the expats being older, wiser & slower the locals young fit and incredibly skilful. As a result we hang around in defence waiting for the others to finish charging around the pitch in a mass of whirling arms & legs and approach a goal, we then relieve them of the ball pass it to one of our Zambians and start the whole process again. The only exception to this rule is a Jordanian called, thoughtfully, “Jihad” who goal hangs all game abusing his team mates for just about everything they do but primarily for not defending properly when they don’t have the ball and for not giving him the ball when they do. Fortunately he’s always in white so I can avoid being on his team otherwise I think we’d fall out