Fantasy footballer

I LOOKED ridiculous if I am being honest. The extra-large Notts County tracksuit was far, far too big for me. I looked like I had been very recently ill.

But I didn’t care one bit because I was indulging in a boyhood fantasy of being a professional footballer when I stepped off the Magpies’ team bus in Bad Reichenhall, Germany.

My day as a fantasy professional footballer had started about three hours earlier, when I sat down for a pre-match meal with the players before they set off for their opening pre-season friendly against Slovenian outfit Olympia Ljubljana.

I then travelled with the squad to the game, and when we arrived in Germany I walked through the players’ entrance, yes, the entrance for players towards the dressing-room.

How I hoped someone would ask for my autograph!

Okay, so I was given the tracksuit to avoid any difficulty accessing all areas, rather than the club’s need for a new striker.

But just for a short while, I indulged in the fantasy that I could be thrown on as a substitute for the world’s oldest league club. Maybe, even that I would score the winning goal in the final minute, win a playing contract and fire the Magpies to promotion next season.

My imagination was running wild.

I had to settle for a seat alongside Russell Hoult, Jay Smith, Adam Nowland and Neil MacKenzie in the end, underneath a huge pub umbrella that Hoult found in an asbestos shed at the side of the pitch.

It was a shelter from the torrential rain that poured down for the entire game. But in my mind, it was the substitutes’ bench.

Smith, Nowland and MacKenzie all entered the fray in the second half, but I never got the call. And when the final whistle went, I got back on the coach, turned my laptop on and wrote my report on the trip back across the border to Obertraun.

My tracksuit was sodden and heavy, but I didn’t want to take it off.