When I picked football from the lucky-dip of Weekly Work-outs, I figured I’d probably got off lightly. I mean, I’ve done a football practice before, you kick a ball around and try not to get ‘hot-arsed’ (it’s exactly as painful and humiliating as it sounds) by your mates.
Needless to say I imagined that maybe the Blues may train intensively but as I laced up a tatty old pair of trainers – it hadn’t seemed worth bringing the football boots I’d worn twice all year back down to Oxford for Trinity; it’s supposed to be sunny right? – I was still feeling fairly confident that it was just going to be a bit of a lark.I like to do things ‘all-in’, so the aim was, with the rag-tag bunch of friends and hangers-on (okay, maybe it was the minimal four or five who I’d managed to coerce out to Uni parks) to take the regime pretty seriously. It started reasonably well.
I mean, it’s always fun to do an exaggeratedly serious warm-up completewith ridiculous star-jumps and those surely pointless arm stretches. After that, a quick game of piggy-inthe-middle was called for before we could move on to the main session, and as good a way to humiliate a friend as it is, keep-ball is only ever an appetizer.
Warmed up, we were ready. We were supposed to be doing a smallpitched four-a-side game yet we improvised and went two-on-two with a floatingplayer helping whoever had the ball. Of course when you’re
playing with mates this can be a function easily abused, but it was either that or we’d have had to have a stick-keeper, and no-one ever wants
to go in net right? Despite the early matches being quick-fire four minute affairs, the big goals specified (yes, we’re talking jumpers for goalposts) meant that the scores began to get silly. Silly was good fun, but then I remembered the forfeits the losing team had to do: shuttle runs.
Shuttle runs inevitably remind me of doing the ‘bleep test’ at school. In
a way this isn’t so bad – at school I was the prat who didn’t mind the incessant beeping – but school was a time when there weren’t distractions like Park End, or Hassan’s and if I’m being honest my fitness isn’t what it was. Thus, whilst these shuttle runs started as the prescribed 20 and 40 yard
lengths. they may well not have finished that way and tired me slightly
quicker than I’m proud to admit.
It’s always fun to play football though, and to end, given the paucity of our numbers my comrades and I decided that, given a bigger team game didn’t really seem on the cards, we’d play Wembley Singles, and although I didn’t quite come out on top, we decided to exempt the losers from any more shuttle runs out of sympathy. By the end of an couple of hours pretending to be elite athletes though, I definitely had a bit more respect for the guys who represent us week in, week out. Even if they’re probably still not as scarily
gym-bound as the rowers.
