Story: Dislocated Shoulders, Knees to the Face, and a Pub Feel Up

In this article in the series of 5-a-side stories, it’s a triple-bill of incidents. A cracking set of three weird and wonderful events, sent in by one of our readers, Dan (twitter: @Dandineen).

For information on how to submit your stories, just see the bottom of the page.

Amateur Medics

Pretty much the same group of lads have been playing for 12 years now. A new player is a pretty big occasion. About 6 years ago we had a new guy in on a Tuesday night. His name was Simon. Or Steve. Or Stuart. (None of us can remember exactly). Anyway, we kicked off, I got the ball and, in the spirit of inclusivity, I passed directly to Mr X. Who was then tackled robustly (but fairly) by Mart, went down and promptly dislocated his shoulder.

The rest of the lads just played on and I took the guy out to reception to get some help. We were just discussing the finer details of how to get him to A&E with the receptionist when some bloke came downstairs from the gym and overheard the conversation. He stepped in and said something about being a doctor and that he could help. Without waiting for confirmation he felt the guys shoulder and then whacked it with the palm of his hand. Mr X screamed, went a bit white and then flexed his arm. All appeared to be OK. The ‘doc’ just walked off.

Mr X came back and played the rest of the game in goal! Strangely enough he didn’t come back the week after. We never found out of the guy at reception was a real doctor or just someone who had seen Lethal Weapon a few too many times 🙂

How to knee yourself in the face

Take your knee, and quickly lift it until it painfully impacts against your own face. Or just do what Ifor did, below. 

We have a guy playing with us called Ifor. Somehow he actually managed to knee himself in the face. That’s right: knee himself in the face.

It was just one of those things you can’t ever repeat if you tried a million times. The ball was around chest height and he tried to (bizarrely) both header it down and knee it up at the same time. The ball travelled about 5 inches from his knee into his face and straight back again rebounding off his still accelerating knee a second time and returned to his face. We were using a cheap, hard, hollow plasticky ball from Sports Direct and so the noise was described by The Team as ‘a hand smacking a latex covered arse really hard’ 🙂 An evocative description indeed.

Suffice to say we were all laughing so much that the game was delayed for 5 mins whilst we got our composure back. Ifor was a bit bruised but fine.

Watch your thighs when you’re in the pub…

The last of these brief stories is a bit of a disturbing one, actually. It involves one of the guys who plays with us called Jack, and occurred just outside of the pub we drink at after the games.

A drink in a picturesque pub after the match: what could possibly go wrong? 

We’ve been playing in the same place for 12 years now and we always go to the same pub in Bath for a quick after-match pint. We were sat outside on a warm August evening cooling down when a rather inebriated gentleman approached. He pulled up a chair directly in front of Jack. Whereas most of us are/were weathered 40somethings Jack is very tall, slim and 20.

This was odd but we all ignored it – we fairly regularly have people bumming cigarettes or asking for change due to where we sat. However, it moved from normal to rather creepy when the gent placed his hands on Jack’s bare knees. He then announced ‘You have lovely legs’ before running his hands up and down Jack’s exposed flesh, stopping just before the lip of his shorts. Jack was so shocked he said nothing for about 30 seconds. The man just sat there, hands on Jack’s thighs.

We were all just laughing while Jack tried to muster some sane response. All he could come up with was ‘Oi!’ At which point the guy got up, said ‘Have a nice night lads’ and walked off into the night. Jack probably still bears the mental scars from that incident to this day!