Football on Duckes Meadow

Somehow this week I got roped into playing for the 11-a-side Sunday football team which my housemates have set up as part of the University's squad. Despite not having played football in at least four years, I could have done a lot worse. Despite knowing that the pitches had been inundated a week ago, and we've had bouts of torrential rain ever since, last night we were given the go-ahead by the Athletic Union, which resulted in the four of us calling on as many people as we knew to come and play for us.

Despite this, and in the knowledge that we were going to be playing football on Sunday, Ed, Loz, Nick and I headed over to the Christmas market in town to have a look around and try and spot anything which was worthy of being purchased as a present. Having found nothing which attracted our eye, Loz, and I, who had headed out a bit earlier called the other two and got them to join us in drinking some mulled wine by the cathedral.

Sunday dawned looking fairly acceptable, but for once the weather forecast seemed to be spot on in its prediction. At 14:00, just when we were due to kick-off, the rain started coming down, turning an already muddy field into a wet and slimy hellhole... We had eventually managed to assemble a team of 13 players, two of whom Ed had managed to rope in at the last minute by playing in one of their matches in the morning, one who had been out the night before, and three or four helpless cases such as myself.

I started off on the bench, but was subbing for one of the other chaps soon enough, and managed to get through the second part of the first half. Unfortunately, about 10 or 15 minutes into the second half, I unsuccesfully tried to nick the ball off some other chap, which ended in a collision - his foot with my ankle. After hobbling around the pitch for another 5 or 10 minutes, I took myself off and applied cold water (followed by a bag of peas at home) to bring down the swelling.

The end score was 3 - 0, with us on the losing team. However, finishing did mean that we got to come back round to ours, sit down and watch Good Will Hunting, following in a series of rather serious films, including Saving Private Ryan on Saturday evening.