Aches and strains seem worse with age but we ambling amateur footballers just can’t let go | Max Rushden

The game’s all about glory: Max with a medal and a pint. Photograph: Courtesy of Max Rushden

Another season of Puma Kings and desperately telling the side not to try to play out from the back from the first minute – we conceded 30 seconds into the season last year. Let’s see what St Kevins of Glen Iris have got first before our keeper rolls it out to the full-back while the rest of us are facing the other way jogging up the field in the hope of winning a second ball from a launched goal-kick.

Our final pre-season game was an inter-club affair against some young people. One of their teenagers went down complaining he’d been kicked in the belly before I pointed out that he didn’t have a belly and to take a look around at his opponents – all significantly wider than they were 20 years ago.

Although defeated late, I had hit a vicious dipping overhead left-foot volley that had been saved – think Paul Peschisolido and David Seaman. The oohs shook around Princes Park. Unfortunately it was caught on camera and replays show an ambling grey‑haired man moving at the speed of a Virgin trains automatic toilet door and striking the ball with the power of an anaemic kitten.

My hip range of movement isn’t what it was. I can only get on to my bike if I approach it from one side, although, in exciting news, my cholesterol is down from last season. Quite how that translates into duels won is anyone’s guess.

Now the work begins to cement a spot in Sunday’s starting lineup: relentlessly WhatsApping formations to the gaffer that all include me in the holding role. Can I in good conscience suggest moving Henry the anaesthetist, with his engine, out to right wing? We’ve recruited some players who can both control and pass the ball – what dramatic progress is this? One new signing appears to have had some kind of semi-professional hurling career. My days in the non‑moving pivot may be numbered.

My real friends in the UK have banned me from forwarding Instagram reels from people standing by their Agas or posting from their home gyms telling you all that life is for living and to seize every moment: THESE ARE THE TIMES. I don’t need anyone else telling me that after sleep, doom-scrolling and watching Traitors, I have only three-and-a-half days of time left as a sentient human.

But by the same token I know that there will come a time when I can’t get around the small part of the pitch I manage to cover at the moment, and that retirement isn’t an option until it’s the only option. On Sunday, at 11am, Football Victoria Metro South-East Division Five begins. We go again, again.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.