Holy Toe

After a two week lay off owing to extensive toe-knack I resumed footballing action last Friday evening and was duly asked not only to select the sides, but was also given the responsibility – and what a responsibility – of writing the post-match blog.

With Simon Gas was away watching some Russian theatrics, (my feelings on Russian playwrights are consistent with Withnail’s – old women moaning about ducks going to Moscow), we were shorn of our spiritual leader, but nevertheless enough chaps showed up to make for an enthralling six aside game.

Lining up for the Bibs were me, Dan, Alan, Simon Inkpen, Wing-Commander Will and Ian the exiled Gooner

Playing for the Colours were Boro Dave, Alex, Paul The Guvnor, the late Geoff who was early, Sam and Danny.

There then followed a nineteen goal extravaganza containing great finishing, appalling defending and some very tired legs by the time the rattle went at twenty to eight. The final score was 11-8 to the Colours, although the Bibs had taken an early lead and lead again at 2-1 after Alex had equalised. The scores were reasonably close for the first third of the game, before Boro Dave embarked on an orgy of merciless finishing, the majority of his strikes fizzing off his left foot and nestled snugly in the bottom right hand corner. I think the disparity between the two teams was at least five goals at one stage, with Alex and Boro Dave running riot and various Bibs players failing to track back. One goal Dave scored felt particularly galling, as he nutmegged me around the halfway line and then tore through on goal and slammed the ball past the last vestiges of the Bibs’ defence, leaving the keeper with little chance. I asked Dave how many he’d scored after the game and he said he’d lost count, which tells its own story.

Other notable incidents were a goal Dan scored direct from the restart to make it, I think, 2-2, and a fine poacher’s goal from Alan after I’d robbed Geoff and saw my shot come back off the post via Sam’s fingers.

I managed to bag a late hat-trick to restore a modicum of respectability to proceedings – the first was the best, Dan tapping a free kick sideways whereupon I pushed it high into the top right hand corner. The second was a speculative toe-poke and the third a scruffy finish, but what proved remarkable was that all three goals came from right foot, which was still feeling somewhat tender. Before the game I’d bought a toe protector, labelled ‘Toe Foam’, from Superdrug for the princely sum of £1.99.

Danny opined that said toe foam looked a) like a waste of money and b) like a hindrance. I am inclined to agree, as I had to roll it over twice to fit it onto my already swollen toe and after a few minutes of running around I could feel it unpleasantly squeezing my big toe like an elastoplasted python. Still, you can’t argue with the statistics – all three goals, including the toe-poke, came courtesy of the swaddled digit and I am now faced with the prospect of having to squeeze the tube-like object around my right foot-thumb next week, too. The holy toe foam is here, (above); behold its magnificence as it sits majestically in my back garden.

And so to the pub, for five of us at least. This week’s theme was that people in their twenties don’t know how to behave in a pub; witness two girls at the bar, paying by card (which should be a capital offence), fiddling in the purses for plastic when they should be primed with cash at the moment the barman confirms the tariff of their round; a lad braying to his phone at the bar and getting in Ian’s way, thereby causing him to spill beer; people ordering complicated drinks and not moving away from the bar quickly enough once they’d taken delivery of them.

Next week’s episode of Grumpy Old Men will come to you in association with Ronseal and a quarter of Everton mints.