Haha, this brings memories. Maybe UEFA/FIFA should introduce jumpers for goal posts, should make for a more interesting viewing. I could imagine the situations Forward: It went in!!!One nil us Goalkeeper: No, it went over the jumper, no way that's a goal Forward: I'm telling you, honestly, it went in Referee: Do you swear it? Forward: Cross my heart and hope to die Referee: Ok, one nil for you.
One thing that always amuses me is there is a pitch near my house. It has nice, real goal posts at either end but most of the time people divide the pitch in half and play two games of 5 on 5 width-wise. You know those portable goals that come in a sack, and you can just assemble them anywhere? 9 times out of 10 when I go there I will see that rather than actually assembling the goals, someone just throws down two of the bags at either end for use as a goal. That's like $600 of portable goals serving a function that could be just as easily carried out with four jumpers (or as we call them "sweaters"). And with just $300 worth of portable goals, you could just have you know... actual goals.
Good to hear some American lads are getting into the spirit. I remember once when I was 15 years old a team came over from the US to do a small tour of the UK, playing some local school teams. When we played them, they arrived in a massive shiny coach with the teams name and logo all over it. They had brand new matching training gear and Premier League quality kit, while all we (Bellemoor Boys School) had, was mis-matching black shorts of various different sports brands, and itchy cotton yellow rugby jerseys. We thought they were gonna play us off the park, but we actually won 3-2. The way they reacted every time one of our lads used a shoulder to knock them off the ball had us wondering what kind of football they taught you over there. Since then American friends of mine have explained that football in the US is generally more for the 'softer', middle class types, much like tennis is in the UK. So like I say, good to see that the fancy equipment you described is being shunned, out of pure love for the beautiful game. EDIT: You're American right? Or am I just imagining that?
Ah but the problem with 'actual goals' is that it make sit harder to argue if a ball "went in" or not! Jumpers make for a good row.
I recall the days when I would turn up at the Veracity Ground, for a Sunday morning game, to find (as always) that the pitch hadn't been rolled following any other games during the week. The penalty areas, in particular, were frozen mud patches with so many peaks and troughs, it was like playing on corrugated iron. Those were the days.
Telling me, I used to play in goal and was always more concerned about the bath following the match because all the grazes and cuts from diving around in frozen, rutted penalty boxes - used to sting like hell!
Bet you were just waiting impatiently for the tube of deep heat to be passed to you Ooh the smell of an 80s/90s changing room through the colder months.
I hope it doesn't smell like the changing rooms I can remember - a mixture of sweat, wind and deep heat! Not the sort of smell you would find in one of those air freshener dispensers!
Let me paint a picture: Deep heat - check Wind - um, er, maybe Sweat - my office is my conservatory and so a glass box that has the sun on it from 2pm onwards. You've coming over for coffee, visit early in the morning
Deep Heat has been around that long that it's the smell of 50-60s changing rooms as well. So I'm told, of course. If I search back to my earliest memories of playing proper representative football, I can remember a changing room in a Newton Abbot school when my school team went on tour to the West Country during the summer [do they still do that sort of thing.?]. It was a proper changing room too, quite unlike the cloakroom we had back in Southampton. Think it was 68-69, so I'd just turned 10. I'd been in the school team for a couple of years upto then and we'd come second the first year and won the schools league in the second year. So we went on this two week tour of 5 games. First time away from home and family and I think we were all really homesick. The only time we were happy was when we were playing so that helped us win all our games. Incidentally, our school kit was blue and yellow quarters, white shorts and socks. Kind of Saints away kit from a never era. Think our adoptive families washed our stuff. They were so nice to us too that I felt bad about wanting to be home.
The change from when I was at school in the eighties to now is insane. I remember it would be absolutely freezing, rock hard pitch and you HAD to wear shorts, long socks and shirt. No gloves allowed nor anything else. Just the basic kit. The kids today turn up to training in April with an underlayer on and I don't mean a thermal vest. It is all dedicated sports thermal leggings and undertop, gloves, snoods, wooly hats. It's mad. We would have got laughed at by the other kids turning up like that. Oh and I forget. No training on hard frozen pitches these days. They are indoor from October through to March. and loads of the games through the cold months are cancelled. Poor dears.
Yes, it was probably quite similar in your 80's era to my late 60's era. Certainly your ball would have been a Bucky football, please log in to view this image rather than the old 18 panel white leather ball that I played with in the late 60's. Brazil 1970 introduced the Bucky Ball. please log in to view this image We probably both played in either Adidas, Puma, Patrick or Gola boots. And they'd probably have been black. Mine certainly were. I didn't play in white boots until Alan Ball made them fashionable, which was well after the late 60's, and then it was still 99.9% black boots.
No all our school balls were those old Saints badge ones you have there. It was a ball to us. Never heard the names you give them. The balls the kids brought in and messed about on the playground were the newer type but not the ones the school owned. And there would only be one or 2 kids with Adidas or Nike or Puma. Parents didn't spend that kind of money when I was at school. Everybody had Reebok, Patrick or Gola. I always loved Patrick because of the Saints connection. And I never in my life saw a pair of football boots that weren't black until one player appeared in the Prem in some white ones. Can't remember who it was. Everybody wore Bertrand black boots back then.
In the 70s any kid wearing gloves would have been so ridiculed it would have scarred him (and it would have been a "him") for life. Even vests or T-shirts were frowned on. I still remember a match against Southern Grammar(Portsmouth) when we started in a snowstorm. I was on the right wing and the chap on the other wing was standing crying with exposure or something (he was nearer the sea). Can't remember what happened to him but I scored a goal and we won, so everything was OK!
