Today Custom House 5s made their official debut in the Islington Soccer Sixes league. All the other teams played last Monday, but because there are nine teams in the league one team gets a week off every week and last week was our turn. Sunday night I had ten players interested in playing, come Monday morning six of the bastards had pulled out so I was only left with four.

Cue me running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to find additional players, I couldn’t find anyone so it looked like I would have to take to the pitch with four players. That was until about 5:30pm when suddenly I started receiving messages from people asking if I had any spaces left. I ended up taking seven people.

Despite the fact that the league has the word “sixes” in it we were only allowed to field five players, because I had seven of us I decided to drop myself to the bench. A lot of the players were not ready for the pace of the game and struggled to keep up. We went on to lose the game 6-3, funny enough we didn’t concede when I came on for the last five minutes of the game, I just sat in front of the penalty area like a big fat bastard.

Despite the loss it was fun and I can’t wait to do it again next week.

One of the people who turned up was a friend of mine who I went to school with and haven’t seen in eighteen years, after the game we nipped into a nearby pub for a quick drink to have a catch-up. It was nice seeing him again and reminiscing about the school days, the shit we got up to and what other people are up to now.

Photo by Peter A. from FreeImages