Foot-me-don'tMy tale of football injury woe, re-written for The Guardian’s Fiver newsletter:Like David Beckham, I can lay claim to breaking a metatarsal in my foot whilst playing the Beautiful Game. Though I doubt Degsy's broken foot woe was the result of his attempts to buy a second hand Austin Allegro he'd seen in Thames Valley Auto Trader.
Desperate for wheels to impress a young lady (and boy, she must have been easily impressed), and lacking the funds to purchase a vehicle that hadn't been modelled on Jennifer Lopez's rear, I was desperate to purchase this particular All-Aggro. This involved frequent phone calls to the number listed, which always seemed to be engaged.
After a passable 45 minutes for my Sunday League side, in which we'd managed to keep the opposition down to single figures, I dashed upstairs to the clubhouse bar to give the phone number another try. Engaged, and the ref was calling us out for the second half.
Three-by-three I took the clubhouse stairs in my hurry to get down to the pitch, a very bad idea if you're in football boots. About halfway down, my legs disappeared from under me, and I went down faster than a Ruud van Nistelrooy swan-dive.
"Run it off lad!" said the boss, so I did, for about two paces before collapsing in agony, bright lights of pain flashing in front of my eyes. To make things worse, I got a yellow card and a ten quid fine for swearing (because it ****ing hurt), and my dad - a doctor of some repute - failed to spot the broken bone until my foot went purple and grew to twice its normal size.
I got a fat-arsed Fiat Strada instead.