Sweating together

Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesians, urged his brothers to engage in activities with young people, to meet them on their territory as it were, so that they would then have an opportunity to begin conversations which could lead to good things. Accordingly, at lunchtime today I put on my sports kit and headed down to the sports hall where students are able to play football for free for an hour. Actually, I still love playing. The head of our sports centre, Sarah Studds (pictured below with some of the footballers) is keen that as many people as possible on campus use our facilities.

Fourteen lads and a 47-year-old gathered and we split into three teams of five. After a while I found that I was huffing and puffing rather a lot and so volunteered to go in goal. "That's OK," I said retrieving the ball from the net once more as one of my teammates volunteered to take over from me, "I'll stay in goal for a few more minutes." They thought I was great because every young man wants to be centre forward; I just wanted to carry on living a while longer. We were undoubtedly the worst of the three teams. Reflecting on this towards the end one of our number suggested that in future the better players ought to be more equitably distributed among the teams. "You're right there," I said. "Apart from me we're rubbish."