Street football memories

[Paulie Dangerously]

Red arse anyone? NOT IN

[stringvest]

Billy Collins was a legendary figure when we were kids. He used to organize street league games and there were some great nights at Eldon Grove. It was floodlit and the big games created a great atmosphere. I remember an Irish team playing there against one of the local teams - could have been Holy Name - and the landings of the neighbouring flats were just full of people watching the game, and making a great noise.

 

I only played on the Grove in a league game once, that was because I was shite, but we had loads of unofficial matches there. The metal goalposts were fuckers to collide with and one touchline was only inches from the iron perimeter fencing. It would probably contravene all sorts of health and safety laws today but it really was a great place to play footy.

 

And in all the games I saw there, and taking into account the variety of hardcases who competed in the games, I can't recall any great punch-ups. But that was probably down to the influence of Billy Collins and the respect in which he was held. The little man loved the kids and the game but he would ban any players or teams who fucked about. Then it would be back to the cobbles and 'ennos' for goals.

Wow! I remember billy Collins, and those games on Eldon Grove. My nan lived just off Burlington Street, and my cousins lived on Eldon Street, so I used to play on that site quite a lot, even after the flats were emptying out. Billy was a real community leader by example. I lived up Stanley Road, and me and my mates used to play our matches on Fountains Road, with the pitch being a diagonal across the road, and the goals were between a lamppost and a wall on each side. If you went on a run you might have to beat 5 players, 2 cars and a van.

We'd play in the dark, with the only light on the pitch coming from the lamp posts marking the goal. Morning till night. Almost every day. From when I was about 6 to the minute I found alcohol.

[Harry Squatter]

We used to live by Crosby baths and there were massive fields at the bottom of our road with a green wired fence going all around the field. There were sets of concrete posts every 6 feet so we would use them as ready made goals with the green plastic coated wire acting as a net. Once we had completely worn down the turf in one area we would move to the next set of post and wear that down. My mate knocked for me about 8.00 on a Saturday morning and we played 3 and in until his dad came looking for him just in time to watch the A-team and have his tea. He got told off as his Dad had been out for an hour looking for him.

 

I had two brothers so their mates would all come and play with us, as we got older we got more organised and during the summer we would play lads from the surrounding roads. We initially made posts out of bits of wood we found by the beach and 2 lads had nets that we would Sellotape to them. The wood kept collapsing any time anyone would hit the post and nearly took the keeper out each time it fell down. My dad worked for a steel company and got his mate to build us two sets of posts which were slightly bigger than Hockey goals. We used to get tge nets to stretch back for miles in a box shape which we called "Mexico goals" This was good as a 20 a side game usually ended 4-2 instead of 23-20. In the summer you could play there until 10.00 and come home shattered and dripping in sweat.

 

We played a "world series" against a load of loads from a few streets away, basically every weeknight we played each other and they needed to beat us on the Sunday to draw level. We came out and scored six in about ten minutes. The oldest lad on their team was desperate to beat us and was going mad when we were beating them. We stopped for a half time break and saw this lad do a Mike Bassett rant at them at the other end throwing water at them. I wish that I'd known how to do the Sturridge dance then as I would have done it in front of him after every goal I scored.

[Major Tom]

I played football to rep standard as a winger when I was young lad living in NZ. We moved to Liverpool when I was about 10 or so as my mother wanted to live near her family.

 

So, naturally, when we first arrived I wandered to the local park and asked to join in a game being played there by kids around my age. They were really welcoming and asked me what I position I played. I told them I was a winger and so they stuck me on the wing. The standard was a little different to that what I was used to and before too long I got shoved back in goal. Where I remained for every game there on in while we lived in Liverpool.

 

I quit football when we moved back to NZ. Disillusioned.

[Trumo]

We used to play '60 Seconds' outside my neighbour's house. He owned the place but didn't live there so it was empty, but he had a habit of leaving old rusty bangers on the driveway. We used the wall of his front garden as a goal because it was an 8ft by 4ft brick and iron railing solid mass. For a while, the neighbour had left an old van on his driveway (I think it was a Sherpa or something from the 50s or 60s) and it was basically held together with rust. You could see the engine had fallen off its mountings.

 

Anyway, I shanked a wayward volley straight into the windscreen of said van after trying to put my laces through the ball. The windscreen didn't break but it was left shattered. A few weeks later during another game of '60 Seconds', for some reason I decided to smash the ball with my weaker right foot, hitting a shot with a surprising amount of power but even less accuracy than the shot a few weeks earlier. The ball disappeared straight through the cracked windscreen sending shards of glass through the interior of the van, and that was the end of that.

 

It might have been a couple of weeks after that, but the council had sent someone round to remove the vehicle from the driveway because I noticed the driveway was empty when I came home from school. It was soon replaced by an old Volvo estate, of which the neighbour seems to have a collection because he's left several different ones over the years.

[Elite]

When I was 15, my family went to Butlins in Skegness and I took a pal along. Me and my mate got into a game of 2 on 2 with some lads from leeds, using the road between the chalets as a make shift pitch. I will always remember this because as we were playing a woman who was about 50 was walking past with her fella, just as she is walking past my mate hits a rasper of a shot which is way off target and rattles the poor woman on the legs and puts her on her arse, she gives a painful shriek as we all look on nervously and expecting my mate to apologise which he doesn't because he's tongue tied. She is supported to her feet by her fella and they walk off down the road, well he was walking, she was hopping.

[DanDanShaw]

Kicking the ball and it hitting the curb, it would always fuck off over a garden fence or something.  And the anxious wait to see if a car is coming at speed when your ball trickles into the road.

[stringvest]

3 and in.  No blammers.

[LFC64]

Not really but there were lookalikes that did.

 

White Winfield balls from Woolies were ok too.

 

I miss the black and white hexagonal style balls too,they were Classic.

 

If we got hold of a black and white hexagonal then we pretended it was a European match - added a bit of class

 

I liked the white Winfields.

 

Some of the ragged assortment of balls we played with in our junior leagues were unbelievable. You'd always get one overpumped casey that had no give at all and the ping would echo through the houses and leave your foot vibrating. Then from the same bag there'd be an underpumped soft leather one with string and if you caught the valve casing it would kill

[JohnnyH]

We used to get some of the tinker children off the streets and use them as goal posts in the east-wing gardens.  How we’d laugh when I’d "accidently" catch one of the blighters with a stray elbow when I was leaping for a corner.  “Mind ‘ow you go guvnor” they’d say.  Most of them are dead now from consumption.   Great days.

[s(k)aturation]

We used to get some of the tinker children off the streets and use them as goal posts in the east-wing gardens.  How we’d laugh when I’d "accidently" catch one of the blighters with a stray elbow when I was leaping for a corner.  “Mind ‘ow you go guvnor” they’d say.  Most of them are dead now from consumption.   Great days.

 

Isn't everyone from the northside a tinker though, Johnny?

[Paulie Dangerously]

The poor kid who'd bring a flyaway to play with

[scudger99]

I remember when the odd neighbourhood kid would get a real leather ball for Xmas, we would be straight round to get a game with it.  It was almost unheard of for anyone round here to have a real leather ball, and we were still playing with them when the stitching was going, panels were falling off and the orange bladder was sticking out.

[DanDanShaw]

"Don't sit on the ball you'll make it egg shaped you dick head"

[Lee909]

I remember when the odd neighbourhood kid would get a real leather ball for Xmas, we would be straight round to get a game with it. It was almost unheard of for anyone round here to have a real leather ball, and we were still playing with them when the stitching was going, panels were falling off and the orange bladder was sticking out.

Panels starting to come loose a rough bit of leather slicing you're eye open. Kids these days dont have a clue

[Section_31]

Weirds me out seeing old threads where Silverlining is trying to be 'one of the boys'. This must be what it's like being a 15 year old girl and finding out the teenage boy you've been talking to is in fact a 53-year-old widow in a brown tank top and jizz stains all over his monitor.

[DanDanShaw]

Weirds me out seeing old threads where Silverlining is trying to be 'one of the boys'. This must be what it's like being a 15 year old girl and finding out the teenage boy you've been talking to is in fact a 53-year-old widow in a brown tank top and jizz stains all over his monitor.

 

People like that shit house are the reason my mum banned me from Habbo Hotel.

[Fugitive]

Anybody play fouling footy? Anything goes and injuries galore. Also, bare arse with an all weather ball was good at toughening up the arse area.

[DanDanShaw]

Anybody play fouling footy? Anything goes and injuries galore. Also, bare arse with an all weather ball was good at toughening up the arse area.

 

Red arse we called it, 5 lives in the net?  If you hit it over/wide or the keeper catches it you're in the net?  What a brilliant game, the rule with us was everybody got 2 shots at the loser, or 1 shot each if the loser took his pants down haha!

 

Worst bit of it all was not being able to see the ball until it either hit you, or hit the wall you was stood facing.

[Bjornebye]

Heads and volleys , concede 10 and its bare arse 

 

Hours of fun 

[Section_31]

"No ball games" 20 years later everyone in England has heart disease. Fuck off.

[Bjornebye]

[Jairzinho]

Number 4 is only if you're soft. Matches ended when it was too dark to see the ball.

 

Really fancy a game now. Memories of climbing over garages to try and find the ball, and getting bollocked by old women for destroying their Chrysthanthemums.

[Trumo]

Number 4 is only if you're soft. Matches ended when it was too dark to see the ball.

 

Yep. That usually coincided with people coming home so more and more cars were getting parked meaning there was no space left anyway.

[stringvest]

I've still got scars on my hands from climbing over walls to retrieve the ball. Remember when people would put tar and broken glass on the top of walls to stop kids climbing over them? So do my hands.