This was a bad, bad night for the Nanns, we played a third division team, we lost, we lost bad, if the truth be old we were insipid, unexiting, bland, stale, maybe we missed Gill, or Tao or both, maybe it was because we didn’t think it was competitive, or we had too many chances in the first ten minutes that we could not convert, or maybe it was Andy turning up late, or the coach or captain failing to communicate that the loser of the game would not get points, even though we were playing a forfeited match, which convinced some of us not to take the game seriously until about half time, or maybe it was because most of us do not get high for the game anymore, which makes us, contrary to popular opinion, shit, or maybe it was because we were playing a third division team and their two best players turned up right when we felt most comfortable, which lulled us into a false sense of security, or  maybe it was a return to the pits, or maybe it was too much soccer last week, or maybe it Manchester United on the threshold of winning the premier league as well as the champions league for the second year running.

Maybe it was because we knew we were going to the chief afterward, maybe the thought of the chief depressed and saddened us because we know it is a shit venue and the captain was yet again trying to fuck us, which he likes to do these days, but maybe I am too harsh on the captain for he pay us back the extra money he owed us that he overcharged at the bushfire soccer fundraiser, or maybe the thought of the chief reminded us that we are not young men anymore, like those heady days when Cocky was first going for a job at ACMI, and the place was lively, and it was not deserted like it is now, and we still felt the thrill at the anticipation of competitive sport when it was not hard to get all excited with many butterflies in our tummies at the mere mention of playing on the hallowed turf of the APISC, when work was not too much, and multiple babies didn’t make sleep difficult, and partners / wives did not tear us away from the pitch, and we played against suckers that we could take down ten nil, when we could go out afterward and drink until midnight with many reefers and the promise of the odd impromptu thrown in, when we are not thinking about the next day, when we were not thinking about performing and being coherent when meeting with the CEO and senior management, when the ride was not a struggle, when our thigh muscles did not ache for two days after running, when our bodies were repairing themselves overnight, when we could still perform complex cerebral tasks after about 2pm after drinking five beers and smoking countless reefers the night before, when soccer seemed like it would go on forever, but now we are perhaps thinking differently, thinking how we preserve the little energy, the little strength, the little endurance that is left in our bodies, maybe we are thinking about a switch to a sport that has less impact that does not take as much time to recover from, that will not fuck us up bad for weeks on end if we do happen to have a mishap, but then maybe we think that these thoughts are all a bit premature and we remember teams like the wasted youth who were mostly forty-five plus and were still able to whip much younger men like us in our heyday,  and maybe we will stat thinking about playing smarter, letting the ball do the work instead of us doing it, which has been the Nanna way for many a year but maybe getting older is exactly what the Nannas need to reinvigorate our game, our style of play, maybe it is what we need to conserve out energies and bodies so that we have a good another ten years in us, and then some.