Walking Disaster

I've been playing a bit of walking football, with predictably mixed fortunes...

As you get older, the spectre of loneliness is an ever present curse. You might be retired and missing the interactions, good and bad, that work provides, even if you don’t miss the spirit crushing inanity of the daily drudge. Your kids could well have flown the nest and have their own lives to lead. Lives that only tangentially intersect with yours, and even then on an infrequent basis. You might be on your own, for whatever reason and in whatever circumstances that results in. Mates are more in name than in reality. Texts, not meet ups. People don’t do the local anymore, other than perhaps for the football and everyone’s growing tired of that these days. Fulham versus Palace on a Monday night? Nah. Too much of an ordeal. I’ll leave it thanks. There’s your team of course, but only if you can get, or afford, a ticket. Sometimes the rarity value of such occasions makes it an absolute pleasure to be among a large gathering of bile spitting moaners. Having a reason to be in crowded bars on a busy matchday reconnects you to a community you’ve felt more than semi-detached from in an era. Things won’t go back to how they were.

Sure, if you’ve still got a bit about you, there’s the garden, reading or watching a film or box set. All worthy time fillers, but pretty solitary vices. Music’s great too, but gigs cost a fortune and tickets, or travel need to be planned months in advance. When you’re there, the aches and pains of ageing backs and joints make it sometimes hard to deal with the whole experience of being on your feet for the thick end of 3 hours. And how often do you turn up to a show, expecting to know a few folks and spend the whole time fruitlessly scanning unknown nodding heads for a familiar face. And failing. Going for a walk, especially if you’ve got a dog, or getting out on the bike? Pretty good for mind, body and soul, but not a great way to forge human interactions. Likewise the gym, where most of the young ones seem more interested in scrolling than working out. Sometimes I wish I was posh and played golf. Only sometimes.

I retired at the end of last year and was delighted to do so. I’m still half a decade away from my state pension, but a more than decent occupational scheme that I’d religiously paid into from the year dot, made leaving graft an attractive and sensible option. I’m in my early 60s and still in decent nick health wise, so the big question for me was what the hell do I do with myself? I write stuff and make music, so the creative angle is boxed off, but some days inspiration doesn’t come. So what then? Sensibly I’ve not headed down the route of daily day drinking, managing to get an hour down the gym maybe 4 times a week. However, what I was really craving while I sweated through 500 cardio calories was group interaction. A bit of idle chit chat and a belated attempt at broadening my horizons. Suppose I could have joined a ramblers’ group or taken up watercolour painting, but such activities just didn’t appeal.

For almost my entire life, I’ve played team sports, specifically football and cricket. I still do. Just about. I’m an enthusiastic rather than competent keeper, a funereally slow offy (arthritis in the shoulder has ended any pretensions of leg spin) and an utterly inept batter (the hand to eye co-ordination has gone for good). However, I love both sports and aim to go on with them as long as possible, while acknowledging I’m one serious injury away from enforced retirement.

Considering we’re talking early January when I first found myself awash with free time and nothing with which to fill it, the cricket season was still months away, so that wasn’t a solution. I mean we’re right in the swing of it now and, sadly, I’m increasingly finding myself extraneous to requirements as Tynemouth CC 3s sit top of NTCL Division 6 Central and rarely call on my services, but that’s something I’ll cover in a few weeks in more depth. Instead, back in those cold, dark days at the turn of the year, I first considered Walking Football. It wasn’t something I knew anything about; other than the fact I was part of the target demographic. Ironically, in the league I’ve ended up in, keepers only need to be over 40. There’s pushing a quarter of a century of potential competitive action I’ll never get back.

North of the River Tyne, Walking Football is organised almost exclusively by the Newcastle United Foundation, which is the charitable wing of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) that uninterestedly owns the club I still semi-support. However, the great thing for the parsimonious PIF, even if I detect their influence on how the Foundation operates and the overarching philosophy it promotes, is that all funding is provided by those legendary munificent benefactors, the Premier League. To dial back on my rampant cynicism for a second, I will point out that every session the Foundation runs is completely free for all participants. Considering our weekly 6-a-side kickarounds between whites and darks now cost £7.50 per player, that’s a decent result. Especially as the Foundation run 10 different weekly sessions at an array of venues, with nothing stopping you, other than physical decrepitude, from turning up to every one of them.

I didn’t know any of this when I first put out tentative feelers about finding a team.  One of the finest fellas involved in the grassroots game on Tyneside is Mark “Bully” Bullock, the founder and manager of Hazelrigg Victory FC (aka “Hezzy”) of the Northern Alliance Premier Division. Bully has been involved with Hezzy for 2 decades now and has overseen the refurbishment of their ground at Hazelrigg Welfare, several promotions and cup wins for the first team, as well as the establishment of a Sunday morning side and a Monday evening over 35s outfit. Next season, they’ll have a team in the North East Over 40s league on a Saturday morning and they’ve already got a Walking Football team for the over 50s, which is why I got in touch with them. Responding to a post on Hezzy’s Facebook page talking about these veteran ballers, I mentioned that if they ever needed a keeper, then to give me a shout, as a newly enrolled member of the leisured classes, I was of the have gloves, will travel mindset.

My post got the thumbs up, but I didn’t hear anything else until mid-March, when I got a message from a name I didn’t recognise. Dee Howey. Turns out he was the organiser of Hezzy’s Walking Football team and was keen to sign me on as back up, as their first choice keeper was sometimes unavailable. From this initial contact, I learned that while 9 of the weekly sessions put on by the Foundation were effectively pick-up games where a rolling cast of participants played with no real competitive edge and little formal organisation, Thursday daytimes at Blakelaw in central north west Newcastle, saw 24 sides competing across 2 divisions. This was proper stuff. Two 20 minute, 6-a-side games each week, guaranteed. Strips. Registration, including proof of age. Referees. The whole shebang. I told him that I was more than interested and would be available every week, if required.

I felt elated to have been chosen, though slightly nervous as to whether I’d be of a decent enough standard. As a late diagnosed person on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, I have come to understand my abject terror regarding new routines, changing circumstances and unfamiliar locations is part and parcel of who I am. I’ve endured agonising terrors my whole life, going back to primary school, whenever I’m come up against something new, something challenging. That isn’t going to change now, nor is my obsessive need for order and regimentation around the house. However, I love football and I’d played at the old Blakelaw FC loads of times in the past. Also I knew, as a non-driver, and a complete public transport obsessive, that I could get one bus from near mine to the facility. I also reasoned that if I was crap, I didn’t have to go back, not that they’d probably want me to.  All looked promising, especially when I was added to their WhatsApp group (how did humans ever communicate before this was invented?) at lunchtime on Saturday March 21^st. That day, I was watching Percy Main away to Wideopen, ironically the village down the road from Hazelrigg, but I became distracted from our dismal 2-0 defeat when my phone absolutely blew up.

As well as my ASD diagnosis, I have suffered from (and inflicted on others) crippling depression and explosive anxiety. I’ve been medicated for both conditions for decades now; with only minimal efficacy I must admit. The first condition exists mainly in my head, and when it comes, I struggle to get out of bed, never mind putting my keeper kit on. Like most depressives, my condition manifests itself as a kind of private hell. Hiding away with the curtains drawn until the black dog passes is the only realistic way to get over it. Sometimes it lasts for weeks. If I’m lucky it can be gone in a few hours. Unfortunately, my anxiety is far more visible and has often resulted in volcanic eruptions of socially unacceptable conduct, on buses, in shops and pubs, or just about any public setting imaginable, when my fight or flight response goes haywire. Anxiety and ASD is a bad combination at the best of times and has almost been lethal for me on several occasions over the years. Generally because I’ve felt I’ve been ignored, belittled, misquoted, patronised or intimidated, and reacted badly. As a consequence, I’ve spent nights in protective custody, though never once been charged. That said, I have been barred from shops (Sainsburys won’t deliver to me) and pubs because of a range of incidents that seem to have got worse and more confrontational as I get older, though I’ve kept a lid on things these last couple of years.

For me, and a lot of other people, the 2020 Covid lockdown was a tough, tough time. The longer it went on, the more I feared a return to reality, or a semblance of it. Stuck indoors most of the time, I genuinely abhorred the thought of contact with other people, yet still desperately needed to get outdoors, just to breathe fresh air. One Wednesday evening late in June, I went out for a walk. The ostensible reason was I needed some Dreamies for the cats, but by the time I got to Tynemouth Co-Op it was near 8pm, which was closing time. As a result, the manager who was operating the front door wouldn’t let me in. I reasoned with him. I pleaded with him. I argued with him. He wasn’t budging and started being abusive about my appearance. Now back them I had dreadlocks down to my arse, a full beard and weighed about 3 stone more than I do now, with almost all the extra heft on my gut. I looked a state. I looked mad. And I suppose I was.

To cut a long story short, I had a complete and utter raging meltdown. Bad enough in itself, but even worse, some young ones filmed me on their phones and uploaded it to all social media platforms. I went viral. It was awful as it was totally beyond my control. My wonderful friend Anna O’Neill was an absolute star, in relentlessly pursuing Facebook and Twitter to get the offending videos taken down. This worked in stopping the further spread of the video, but the damage had largely been done as it had been seen about a million times, shared, downloaded and used as a stick to beat me, then and now. It’s still on You Tube if you want to search it out. People still do. In September 2022, a convicted hooligan jailbird taunted me about it in The Mean Eyed Cat. When I objected, he dragged me outside and kicked me repeatedly in the face on St. Thomas Street. I should have got the coppers involved, but I didn’t. In early 2026, I was alerted to a sticker in a pub toilet that was a still of the video, with the motto “crazy cat man.” Even 6 years later, I can’t escape an episode that publicly caught me at probably my lowest ever ebb. Not only does my past haunt me, but it also frightens me that social media has this power over my current mood and a public image, that is so far removed from my present persona. Perhaps the most awful impact this video had was the power to prevent me playing for Hazlerigg Walking Football team. Indeed, it almost prevented me from playing any walking football at all.

As I arrived to watch Percy Main at Lockey Park that March afternoon, I received notification that Dee Howey had added me as a friend on Facebook and included me in the Hazlerigg Walking Football WhatsApp group. He put out a welcome message, and I felt rather proud to be included in this new community. By the time The Main had laboured to a dismal 2-0 loss, things had changed. A person called James Kidd, who I’d known vaguely through grassroots football a decade or so earlier, and was apparently the current Hezzy Walking Football keeper, stated that if I were to become part of the Hazlerigg team, he was leaving immediately and proceeded, in somewhat unflattering terms, to denigrate me and, as a coup de grace, posted several links to the You Tube video of my meltdown of 6 years previous. In response, Dee Howey removed me from the WhatsApp group, sent me a message telling me I couldn’t play for Hezzy if I was going to “upset the rest of the team” and blocked me on Facebook.

Let’s be clear about this, I don’t necessarily object to Dee Howey responding in an insensitive way, as he runs a Walking Football team and isn’t a counsellor or social worker, but I do, in the strongest terms possible, object to James Kidd’s conduct. On account of my enduring mental illness, I am a vulnerable adult by whatever measure you wish to use. Certainly I am covered by the Equality Act and so, consequently, his actions could be construed at least as bullying and probably a disability hate crime. I doubt the coppers would have bothered to do anything if I’d taken a complaint to them, which I wasn’t minded to, but if I’d made a case to the Northumberland FA, they would have thrown the book at Hazlerigg Victory. Because of my admiration and respect for Bully, I didn’t want to do this. Instead, I contacted him that evening with an explanation of what had gone on. He was brilliant.

Hazlerigg launched an investigation in which Dee Howey was informed that he should have handled things better, while James Kidd was given a proper bollocking. I don’t know if this resulted in him leaving Hezzy, but in all the weeks I subsequently played at Blakelaw, including a game against Hazlerigg (we lost 5-0, but more of that later), I didn’t see him once, so draw your own conclusions from that. I was incredibly grateful to Bully for his input and was overjoyed that he had contacted the Foundation, to establish that one team needed a keeper. He forwarded me the email address of the Foundation’s Walking Football co-ordinator, a bloke called Thomas Graham, and encouraged me to get in touch, which I did.

Within 48 hours, Thomas replied, saying he’d linked me to a team called Lemington and that I could start playing from the next Thursday, which was April 9^th. On that day, I took the bus to Blakelaw and met up with my new team mates. I didn’t know any of them, but they are a grand bunch of 10 blokes, some of whom play every week and others who are more casual in their involvement because of life commitments. To be honest, we’re not very good. There were 10 weeks of the season to go when I got involved, and in that remaining time, we played 20 games; 17 in the league and 3 in an end of season cup. We won 4, drew 4 and lost 12, while scoring 24 and conceding 41. As a result we finished 10^th in the Championship and were runners-up in the Silver Plate. The competition is now having a summer break, though the other sessions run by the Foundation continue. I’m not involved in any of them.

While I didn’t know any of my team mates, I did know some of the other players. I played Over 40s for Wallsend Boys Club with two blokes Tim and John, though they’re in the higher division so I didn’t come up against them. I did face Kitchenware Records owner Keith Armstrong, who turns out for a team called The Misfits, and the co-founder of Viz comic Simon Donald, who is a handy player for Blue Flames. Indeed, it was the fall out of the game against Blue Flames that led me to consider whether I was prepared to continue playing for anything under the auspices of Newcastle United Foundation. It is a question that continues to perplex me.

In terms of the laws of the game, Walking Football is reasonably easy to understand. A pitch that is half the size of a full one, with 6 foot high goals. No balls above crossbar height. Kick ins when it goes over the side line and corners or goal kicks, as appropriate, when it goes over the end line. Only keepers allowed in the box, with keepers not allowed out. No tackling from behind or the side and never more than one on one when challenging for the ball. The big thing is the walking. It isn’t strolling or ambling, it’s like a cross between walking in the Olympics and impersonating Groucho Marx. One foot must be on the ground at all times. If not, it’s a foul. Four of those and it’s a penalty.

The referees we had had were mainly of a good standard, but during the first week I was quite taken aback when we all stopped because an opposition player was clearly running. No whistle came and the player scored. I politely asked whether it was a foul and the referee rather pointedly told me not to try and shirk the blame for letting in a soft one. A bit rude, if not disrespectful, I thought, but I tried to forget about it. In the fifth week, we played Blue Flames and were doing well; 2-1 up just into the second half. One of their players rattled in a great shot, but it hit the underside of the bar and bounced away. The referee, a different one, who stood immobile on the sideline at the halfway mark  all game signalled a goal. Even the bloke who took a shot said it hadn’t gone in. One of our players jokingly said to one of the opposition (not the ref) “you need your eyes tested if you think that’s a goal.” Result was a yellow card, and two minutes on the sideline, for “disrespect.” We kick off and lose possession. Being a player down is a nightmare, and they work it through for a simple tap-in. My response “well that’s bloody typical!” Now I’m yellow carded and sent to the sideline. We’re 3-2 down and two players short, so it’s unsurprising when they get a fourth.

At full time, I try to talk to the referee about the incidents. Pointless I know, but my primal need to be listened to came to the forefront. He wouldn’t engage. I didn’t shout, scream or swear. In the end, I walked away, seething. During the week, I get an email from Thomas Graham saying he’d like to talk to me, after my first game in week 6 (May 14^th) about my “conduct.” I turn up and play. We lose 5-0 to Hazlerigg. One of their players deliberately blasts the ball into my face when the whistle had already gone for over head height. No apology from him and no censure from the same referee as we’d had the week before. At full time, I go into an office area with Thomas Graham and some other bloke with a clipboard, stopwatch and whistle. They tell me that they’d considered issuing me with a warning as to my future conduct, after my attempt to engage with the referee the week before but instead have chosen to talk to me about “providing support” for any “issues” that might prove problematic for my continued involvement in Walking Football. I don’t believe I’m hearing this.

Things go from the surreal to a Kafkaesque nightmare when they inform me of how they’re aware of a video of me having a meltdown is in “the public domain.” They show me the Co-Op incident on You Tube. I ask them to turn it off. I tell them it is 6 years old. I’m upset. In tears. They tell me I can’t play in today’s other game (we beat Heaton Stannington 2-1 with a borrowed keeper), or any other one, until they’ve had a meeting between me and the Foundation’s Safeguarding Lead. All the time they keep pushing the idea that they want to provide a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone, other than me apparently.

The next day, I get an email inviting me to a meeting at the Foundation HQ on Diana Street, opposite SJP, 10.00 on Tuesday 26^th May. I get there on time, having scarcely slept the night before with anxiety levels going through the roof. It is made clear, if I don’t do what they say, I’ll have to “step away from the Foundation’s provision.” What choice do I have? They talk about referring me to Adult Social Services. Seriously! Then they remind me of the code of conduct for all players. I ask them about the disability hate crime involving the former Hazlerigg Victory player. Their response is that they can’t do anything about this as it was outside of a Foundation session. I ask about the player blasting the ball in my face and the referee’s failure to act. They tell me the referee saw nothing wrong and felt it was an accident. They can’t comment why the player didn’t apologise. I ask if I can get my travel expenses reimbursed. Apparently it isn’t Foundation policy.

I ask whether they feel I have been treated fairly by being stigmatised because of a previous episode of mental illness. They say it is unfortunate I feel the way I do, but all they are trying to do is create a “safe and inclusive space for all players and the community as a whole.” I ask whether this is reflected by the fact there isn’t a single non-white participant among the 24 teams that play at Blakelaw each week. They point to the fact there is women’s team and several other female players, as well as a team of early onset dementia sufferers as an example of their inclusive ethos. I ask how come there isn’t a team representing the LGBTQIA+ community then. They don’t have a reply.  I wonder aloud if the institutionally homophobic PIF that owns Newcastle United may not be as benevolent and compassionate as the Foundation would like to pretend they are. Silence.

At the end of the meeting, we don’t shake hands. I leave after making an undertaking I won’t question refereeing decisions in future, and we agree I don’t need any intervention from Adult Social Services regarding my conduct 6 years previously. There is an agreement that I can play at Blakelaw from that point onwards. I do and we lose the rest of our league games, as well as 2 cup ties out of 3. On the last day, Peter Beardsley is guest of honour, charged with presenting the trophies. He’s someone who knows all about having spurious allegations thrown at him by Newcastle United employees and not being allowed to defend himself properly.

The season is over, until August apparently. If I’m asked, I’ll play again, basically for something cheap to do with my time that gets me out the house for some exercise. The actual football, despite the results, has been great but I won’t pretend that the whole experience has done anything other than leaving me feeling totally underwhelmed and even more suspicious about the ideology the PIF advances across every aspect of Newcastle United, including the charitable arm of the operation.

 It’s just not cricket you see.