The Inside Forward - - Isotonic Bacon Sandwich

It’s the night before a match and my mind starts to vaguely drift towards entering the first stages of my far from rigid pre-match routine. Naturally there are the usual sensible options such as eating an energy filled pasta dinner or an early night in. Amongst all these choices lies the one single decision that will have the biggest effect on the next day’s performance. A factor that is taken out of the hands of any professional player but at our level can play a significant, yet unseen, part in shaping the league table at the end of the season: The decision to go to the pub or not.

Predictably the usual maxim after a hangover influenced crawl around the pitch is ‘never again.’ With years of experience behind me I’ve finally started remembering and taking heed of this post match, post binge sentiment and now look smugly upon the callow youths in the team who are yet to reach my, admittedly basic, levels of self control.

When the team wins I can look back fondly at the match, which saw one player lying down and taking a nap at half time. The same player walked off the pitch altogether midway through the second half leaving us with ten players as we’d used all our subs.

If the team loses then it’s a different story, such as our infamous ‘Match after everyone’s Christmas Party,’ where half the team weren’t even fit to sit on the bench without falling off it. The team selection process boiled down to picking the eleven players who’d struggled home the earliest the night before. The watershed between making the first team or the replacements turned out to be a shameful 4am and we were lucky to scrape by with a 4-0 loss and only two vomiting incidents that day.

After the booze or no booze decision is made every player will have different pre match rituals he likes to adhere to. You could always tell at what stage one ex-team mate of mine was at in his routine as to whether he picked me up late or not. More often than not he was late, which meant he’d taken the time to, well... how shall I say it...make a lengthy visit to the gents room. But if he was on time then I knew he hadn’t gone yet and that we’d be making a pit stop on the way to the game, with away matches offering the greatest diversity of locations.

This is why on a Sunday morning at 9am I was sat waiting in his car as he banged incessantly on his poor uncle’s front door in order to wake him up and request the use of his bathroom. Another week we weren’t so lucky and arrived at the Ballincollig Regional Park, a venue short on toilet facilities but blessed with an ample supply of quiet wooded areas and soft leaves, if you know what I mean?

After all these crucial factors are agonised over you can be sure that everything is forgotten the next weekend when the process starts all over again and the social life resumes battle with your footballing responsibilities. Surely, you argue, that isotonic bacon sandwich in the morning will provide the antidote to any excesses tonight right?

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