I woke up a few weeks ago with a searing pain under my left ribs. I ruled out heart attack relatively quickly – I haven’t read about your heart sagging as you enter deep middle age, or whatever your late 40s is. Breathing was uncomfortable, but not short – there were no stabbing pains. Inhaling ached, and it turns out you inhale all the time.

Once I was confident of seeing out the remainder of the day, I started Googling other potential ailments in this region, confidently seizing upon ruptured spleen. It sounded impressive enough to put in a WhatsApp group. And so I went with it.

It can creep up on you slowly – a stealth rupture; that figured. The previous afternoon had been my first pre-season outing for the Melbourne University Bohemians – the team I supported as a boy. Football seasons, like plug holes, are upside down here: the season runs from April to September.

I hadn’t registered picking up a knock but I’m at the age where I could split an internal organ just by bending down or trying to turn around a little faster than my knees will allow.

Clearly I’d bumped with some momentum into one of the oppo in a 4-0 humbling by the Brunswick Zebras, causing what felt like irreparable damage.

If my physics GCSE hasn’t left me – momentum equals mass x velocity – I clearly provided the mass in this particular equation, velocity not being a word bestowed upon me since my 11-a-side career began in earnest in 1987 (for some reason neither Transfermarkt nor Wikipedia carries these stats).

The following two weeks featured a great deal of gritting teeth as various small children (belonging to me) dug their feet into my ribs, presumably causing the contents of my spleen to ooze into my inner workings.

Finally Dave, famously the osteopath for the Australian Olympic taekwondo team 2007-08, pressed his hand on my torso and told me I’d bruised some ribs. A lucky escape. Publicly I’d continue with the spleen theory. Either way, there is very little sympathy at home. I have still not been forgiven by Mrs Rushden for ruining a mini-break to Lavenham by tearing my meniscus in 2018 trying to change direction after someone inexplicably played the ball inside as opposed to down the line.

And so here we are. Am I really putting my body on the line again? Am I really eking another article out of this? Forty-seven-year-old man still playing football isn’t going to get the clicks and please don’t go back and read the previous five of these – there is a risk of repetition.

But there’s only so many times you can write about Tottenham possibly getting relegated. And this column now feels like part of the ritual. Scroll down to the comments to see how much this resonates. For some of us, playing the game trumps any level of watching it.

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.

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