It's not at all traditional at this time of year to write a review of the season. But Old Fitzrovians is not a normal football club so I'm doing it now, because I want to.
A bit of background:
Probably triggered by the Barclay's ads I went and played Walking Football up at Arsenal. It was excellent fun. The team was featured in the match programme once, and I made a pass once to Liam Brady that was approved of with a thumbs up. But, it wasn't quite the experience I was after. I wanted something closer to home and more akin to the co-ed matches I used to play in when I lived in Portland.
So, since there's a 5-side pitch near us, I booked a few pitches and asked some people along to play.
Perhaps more importantly, I also made a website and we got some t-shirts made, all magnificently designed by Mark. There's even an instagram account.
Season One
We've played 6 games so far. The first was in August. Two of them were abandoned because only Hilary and I turned up. Hilary has won the 2017 Player of the Year award because of her dedicated commitment to turning up and her steadfast defensive work.
We've had one 'proper'opponent - Futurelearn, who we managed to beat reasonably efficiently. Interestingly, they would definitely have beaten us if we'd been playing proper running football but even after only a couple of games we'd managed to acclimatise more effectively to the slower-paced game.
Season One also confirmed my suspicion that Walking Football can be much more inclusive than the running game. The reduced emphasis on physicality levels the playing field along some more axis. I like that. It means it's not just a game for Sunday League blokes with dodgy knees.
Come and play! Our fixtures are all online, along with match reports from previous games.