I had been an enthusiastic football player throughout my childhood and adult life. Into my fifties I was still playing five a side with work colleagues until the pandemic put paid to that. So that was the end of that avenue of pleasure. Or at least it was until I was persuaded to give walking football a try at one of my local clubs. On reflection I have to say my emotions towards it are mixed.

The most obvious good aspect to walking football is its contribution to fitness, with gentlemen into their eighties still turning out at the sessions I attended. While this is also beneficial to mental health in itself there is additionally a strong social side at such clubs which boosts this further. Certainly I was made to feel very welcome as a newcomer at the one I attended and there is the opportunity to travel to tournaments at home and abroad.

The actual games themselves didn’t go quite so well though. Two of the reasons may be that the concept of walking football is a relatively new or that football doesn’t really work without at least an element of running. This translates to some frustrations out on the pitch. Or at least it did for me.

The definition of walking (or not running) is very hard to apply rigidly in reality. So left open to each referee’s interpretation disagreement and delays arrive on this one with frequent regularity. Similarly the ball being over head height suffers the same fate. With five footers mixed in with six foot three blokes along with everything in between the question arises to exactly whose head the ball is or isn’t over.

Then there is tackling. As far as I could tell it isn’t generally allowed on the wholly sensible premise that older limbs get injured more easily. Both in the case of the person being tackled and the tackler. Again the arguments about if someone has been tackled or not were multiple and the problem is worsened by the large amount of players on the pitch making coming together’s inevitable.

All of these irritations led me to question whether I was enjoying my walking football experience each week, but I stuck at it for three or four months. The final two straws arrived on the same evening though. Firstly two chaps in their fifties (who from what I could tell had been friends for years) started arguing over whether a ball had got out for a corner or not. This resulted in one of them storming off the pitch to the car park and driving home.

Then the gentleman running the session informed me I could only play in goal as my training shoes did not have the required soles for an astroturf pitch. That meant I was going to have to invest in some to carry on playing something I wasn’t really sure about in addition to the twenty five pounds a month club membership. I haven’t ruled out a return to the walking football scene by any means but for now I will watch with interest to see how the game develops.