The Inside Forward - Aye Aye Captain

I still remember the phone call vividly. My initial reaction was confusion as I hadn’t really caught what the manager had asked me and it was getting a bit late in the conversation to ask him to repeat himself without appearing rude. It was only afterwards that I realised all those barnstorming runs up the pitch, last ditch tackles and inspirational, lung busting performances had finally come to fruition, I had been asked to captain the side for the forthcoming season.

My surging sense of pride was tempered only slightly by the realisation that I was a member of a team that rotated the captaincy every year and that the upcoming campaign would be my tenth. But that didn’t stop me telling everyone I knew and a good few that I didn’t; the postman, the neighbours and various barmen. The recurring theme running through the responses was to query what kind of captain was I going to be?

I’ve played under a good few over the years. The blood and thunder type who liked to set an example to his men by kicking the opposition’s shins the hardest and who correspondingly had to play the most games under an assumed name after receiving the most suspensions. There was the manager’s son who that team was built around, mainly so he could get a game as he was, quite frankly, useless. His sole contribution to that team was his purchase of a captain’s armband, making him easier for the rest of us to spot and consequently avoid passing to him.

And who could forget the example set by the inspirational captain who was following with his wife in the car behind us to an away game only to go missing along the way somewhere? After phoning him he admitted they’d popped into Tesco’s to do some shopping and subsequently turned up to the match 20 minutes after kick off.

Looking back now at my own season as a leader of men, I can quite honestly say that the most important attribute a captain in our league needs is the ability to correctly call the coin toss at the start of the match. We’re not playing in Identikit stadiums with perfectly level and manicured pitches, we are playing in fields with, what one might term, ‘character.’

At some grounds you’d be in danger of altitude sickness at one end and yet need a snorkel at the other. Coupled with screaming winds roaring over open ground towards you, it’s pure bliss to turn round at half time and look down at the poor souls defending the penalty area far below you, out of which the ball will rarely be able to escape for the next 45 minutes.

Looking through sepia tinted glasses my season definitely had some highlights. Leading the team out for a cup final at Turner’s Cross is a memory I’ll cherish. Forget false modesty, I committed some of my dirtiest fouls to get the head of that line to leave the dressing room. Lifting the cup 90 minutes later was even better.

And yet despite all the grandiose notions and sense of pride in leading the team, there’s still the lingering, niggling thought that the manager only asked me to captain the team to oblige me to attend training sessions more often.

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