Ball of the foot.

Every Tuesday, come rain wind or ice I'm outside playing five a side football.

 

I am not a manly man in the Grrr!! Beer!! Football!! Beef!! sense of the word. My pursuits are mostly geeky being games, books and music. I'm not much interested in premiership football or cars or mobile phones which is what most manly conversations seem to revolve around.

 

So Tuesdays are always interesting to me as I get to connect with people I have almost nothing in common with except a Y chromosome.

 

I would like to point out I am absolutely awful at football. My technique, if you can call it that, is to get in the way of the opposition almost like one of those plastic characters in a table football game. I get in the way and then boot the ball upfield.

 

I play with guys who aren't good with words, maybe have bought one album in their lives but who are artists with a football. Its almost balletic the way they can twist and turn in different directions with the ball stuck to their feet like glue. Their sense of tactics and gamesmanship would shame a tabletop role-player and retention of obscure facts could see them on mastermind. Provided of course all the questions revolved around Southampton FC or other such club.

 

It's fascinating to find depth and character in aspects of people you would normally assign as totally 2-D.