Hanging Up The Sambas: Official Retirement Blog

Hanging Up The Sambas.

DISCLAIMER: This is not and should not be viewed as a pity blog. While at times it may be self depricating, I am not looking for sympathy or anything, it is just a collection of ideas and facts that have lead to my decision.

After much deliberation, I have decided to retire from Tuesday Night 7s. This is not a decision I have taken lightly, but I feel it is the right one. It will allow me to focus on my burgeoning media career and allow me to enjoy consuming football in a much more beneficial fashion.

My reasons for this are varied, but mainly come down to my own thoughts and feelings. I've been playing regularly with the same group of guys for the past 3-4 months. Most of them pals, some of them acquaintances, others I only know from the Racecourse on a Tuesday night.

Most of these lads play 4 or 5 nights a week, some of them at at Junior level, some of them play in pub teams. Me? I play once a week. And it shows.

When I first started playing, it was all about getting the fitness up. By no means will I be showing up on Embarassing Fat Bodies, but I'm uncomfortably teetering between the 13 1/2 and 14 stone scale at the moment.

So fitness was key in my decision to take football back up. To an extent, my ability to run about for an hour and a half has improved, which I am pleased with. But, running about with guys who are a few stone lighter and can run all night, makes playing the game difficult. I've found myself in the last few weeks ploughing the Emile Heskey furrow, just running in to space. I was ironically calling it the John Sutton roll for a while, until he moved to Hearts, where it now seems he is playing the Kris Jack role.

About a month or so ago, I stopped wearing my flashy looking Puma boots and reverted back to my 10 year old adidas Sambas. The ground was too dry for blades and the Sambas had always been stalwarts back in my youth. I thought by wearing them again, I would get my powers back and be able to make a decent if insignificant contribution to the games.

The 16 year old KJ was never the greatest player but he was speedy enough with the ball at his feet, fairly good in the air, could go past a man and could shoot from distance. The 26 year old version of me, no matter how much I try, has none of that.

This has been none more evident in the last few weeks. My touch has completely gone. I'm too slow. My tackling is appalling. I'm dragging shots wide from less than 6 yards. I'm getting beaten to headers by guys shorter than me. What makes all of this worse is that I really am trying to make tackles, win headers, score goals. I've just lost the ability to do it.

As I said before, my fitness has improved, but to be of any value in these games, I need to be playing as often as my comrades. I could choose to do this, but I have more important things to occupy my nights with these days. Until recently, I have felt up for my Tuesday night games, looked forward to them as my 1 night of proper exertion a week. Now I feel it is time to stop.

This is no discredit to the guys I play with, some of them are a genuine talent, which forces them to take the game fairly seriously. When folk start shouting about "not keeping the shape"and getting angry at losing silly goals it suggests that a little bit of the fun is being sapped out the game. The guys I play with may disagree with that, as despite it being an inclusive fun game, it's is a competitive sport and winning is the aim. I just wanted a kickabout with my mates.

It was the same with the band. What started out as being fun and lively, became turgid and repetitive and the enjoyment was lost. In my opinion, our 4 year stint went 3 years too long, peaking when our single came out and troughing almost immediately after, as we couldn't muster up anything as good as our first year. Again, that may have been through my closed mindedness to a degree, but bottom line is the enjoyment ran out and it began to feel like a chore.

So now does Tuesday Night 7s. I play to make up the numbers and despite all the running in to space and occasional tap ins I score, it's not enough to carry on.

Instead, I'll stick to what I know I'm good at, as opposed to trying to be good at something I used to do to a decent standard. In the last few years I've been guilty of trying to have my fingers in as many pies as I can, and have come up short in a lot of them. I'm 26 now and it's probably time I Focussed on what I can do and not what I think I can.

So for those reasons, I hereby officially retire from Tuesday Night 7s. I am hanging up my Sambas.