Today was the first pre-season friendly of the mighty Custom House FC. I had been attending training regularly and I was rewarded with a place in the starting line-up, the fact that I was only put into the line-up because they were desperate for a goalkeeper is not to be dwelled upon – I was in the team.
I was rather anxious about the game because apart from a bit of mucking about at school (19 years ago) I had only played in goal once before and that was only for 45 minutes and I was only called into action once. I was so anxious that I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night before.
I had bought a goalkeeping shirt as the club one had gone missing. There was only one choice on the racks at Sports Direct, a luminous yellow one, but when I turned up to the match every fucker took the piss out of it. I also learnt that there were no shorts (nobody told me to bring shorts, just a shirt) thankfully I was wearing a pair of cargo shorts so I wore them with my shirt.
I looked a right comical fucking state!
We lost the game 6-2 and I injured my knee, my elbow and I was yelled at by some of the players for not stopping all the goals (I was only at fault for one of them). The manager stuck up for me after the game and reminded the team that I did them a favour by going in goal as nobody else put their hand up.
Wayne said he was expecting me to throw the gloves down and storm off, not because of the abuse (he didn’t hear any of it until I told him), but because of the amount of goals I let in. I was tempted to take off the gloves, but only to give some of our players a slap, but apparently this is not the done thing to do these days.
It really gave me an insight into what goalkeepers have to go through, especially when they let in a goal when it was the fault of most of the team the goal happened in the first place.
I took my nephew with me and we were thrown off the bus after only a couple of stops so we had to navigate our way to the ground by following the bus route. That sounds simple but part of the bus route means crossing TWO major fly-overs. Each time we crossed I had to drag my nephew because he is so gormless he would just stand there. I hope his mother got some life insurance!
I have been asked to go in goal again for the next friendly, but I am secretly hoping that they find a new goalkeeper by then. After the way our defence played this afternoon I was left scratching my head to understand why I’m not getting a look in.