Last night was my last game of football.

I’ve said this before. You can read how successful my previous retirements were in this blog post. But, last night, was definitely my last game. (Maybe).

This time it helps that our five-a-side booking had finished. We had a block booking until the end of March and, as previous years have shown, once the clocks change we lose players to light nights and golf courses. March is a good time to end the booking.

Even if I wanted to play next week, I couldn’t. Well, I could, but it would involve me hanging round pitches pretending to be 14 and begging people to “gonnae gie us a game, mista!”. I think I may be too old to do that. At 14 it shows that you’re keen to play. At 38 it shows you want to hang around with 14 year olds. It’s a bit of a different look…

My last game was meant to be an Old Guys vs Young Guys match. Old guys being anyone over 30. Unfortunately, five of the seven ‘Old Guys’ pulled out due to various injuries including “my feet are buggered after wearing high heels all day*”, which is not an excuse you often get before a game of football. Well, mens football anyway. I imagine female football players are more prone to this than Wayne Rooney.

*A stag do was involved.

Instead, the game became a normal game of fives, and an anti-climatic end to my football career. I thought I was finishing on a ‘cup final’, instead it was just a cold Wednesday night in Falkirk in an industrial shed with a leaky roof. My last game. Definitely. (Probably).