You don’t ever really want to give up kicking a football about, do you, whatever your age? So the swiftly growing availability of Walking Football could become more and more the choice of those looking for footie fun after hanging up their boots.
And having lived for sometime in an area where the only options for myself – as a near 50-year old – were to join in with 5-aside kickabouts with the local women’s team or a bunch of lads with too many teenagers for my old legs, and therefore regularly take a breather before my heart and / or lungs gave way, it increasingly became obvious an alternative was required.
Relocation has since allowed me to take part in the re-launch of walking football sessions with Cardiff City Foundation, gauged for the over-45s. I had imagined that it would be a bit too pedestrian for myself but an option nonetheless. The when it came to my first hour-long session of drills and a 15-minute game at the end mixed with the Learning Disability group, I found it as fun, sweaty and as tiring as you could want. Father Ted it wasn’t!
Pictured – Cardiff City Foundation staff and their Walking Football team
Although numbers were initially low, it was only a month or so before we were up to enough people for small-sided games. Everyone who has come along is more than happy to have the chance to continue playing the sport they love, it’s friendly but competitive and we can’t wait for our first proper match. Those attending include Paul Williams, father of Martyn Williams, who was capped 100 times for Wales, allbeit in rugby.
Right from the off there was a date pencilled in to play Manchester City and especially for myself, with next to no history of club football, it is incredible that aged 53 I could suddenly be representing Cardiff City! With the eldest current player in the UK thought to be 83, that’s hugely encouraging that I could have 30 years of playing football ahead of me, when I’d previously been rather deprived.
It is a test to get used to a fast-walking style of movement, rather than the natural compulsion to start running and to give in to the latter comes at the cost of a free-kick. Other than that and the lack of flying tackles, it’s a lot about your standard ball control, playing to feet, finding space and any trickery you’re able to show off here and there.
Pictured – Pontypridd Walking Football team
Demand for the game recently attracted ten teams to a tournament in Pontypridd, with some players consequently joining the Cardiff group. We signed off the calendar year with a close and very enjoyable game against the CCFC Foundation office staff, with an action-packed 2016 now in waiting.
The game is absolutely booming, to the extent that around a venue a day was added to the www.walkingfootballunited.co.uk/ database throughout 2015, which now lists opportunities to play each week from Cornwall to Aberdeen and Kent to Northern Ireland. The current total of venues is 553 and that continues to increase almost by the day, representing an incredible rate of growth from the first ever session, apparently held in Chesterfield as recently as 2011.
Pictured – Aberdeen Walking Football
Walking Football is one of the options in the FA’s People’s Cup (for which entries are accepted until Friday January 15th) and the likes of England’s Alex Scott have given it a go, along with Harry Kane, Fabrice Muamba, Alan Shearer and Sir Geoff Hurst, amongst others, on this video.
So I’d recommend all those who feel they’re no longer keeping up with the ‘young-uns’ should make the move into the walking game and extend their fitness, fun and football all in one great option.
The FA now have issued a toolkit for anyone looking to start walking football sessions which can be viewed here:
Pictured top – Alex Scott in action (Photo: Arsenal Fan TV)
SHE KICKS – the online community for women’s football
