| You know you're a junior footballer when....... |
1. You spend all winter on the beer speculating on who will be brought in to manage the team next year.
2. The hardest tackle you will make all year is in an indoor soccer match in January.
3. When you break your brother-in-law's leg.
4. There are 35 at training under lights on a bitter February night (unfit but enthusiastic) - the average for August is 7 (the rest are either unfit, sick of training, repeating exams, in the US or making silage).
5. When you go for a pick-up, you fumble the ball at least twice before you just kick it.
6. The full forward has his son and nephew in the corners.
7. The nephew is two years older.
8. For a 2.30 throw-in, you start packing your gearbag at 2.40 and still manage to be on the field before the referee even arrives.
9. You can get a match called off because your star player is playing for the County under-16's the following week.
10. Your tight marking corner back never gives an inch – except, of course, when the ball gets inside his own 50 and he charges out after it with all the other backs, forgetting that the other team are even on the field.
11. Your goalie lets in a sitter every second game - this usually happens after you have scored 5 points from play to reel in a difficult half-time deficit.
12. Or in the first minute if it is a final.
13. Your full-forward (nickname - Bomber) can't score but "he's a good man to bust up the play".
14. Your centre forward can't score either but "he'll stop a good man from playing".
15. Your championship is either a round robin that requires you to play six league games to eliminate one team, or a knockout starting in October.
16. Your no 8 can’t catch the ball and is only there because he is the tallest lad in the parish.
17. Any members of your panel who claim to have back injuries are either lazy or completely daft. Unless you can see blood, bruises or bandages, they are making it up.
18. Before every match, the forwards are told to stay wide and not bunch - but this is not what happens. The only time any forward goes wide is if they are looking for water.
19. Your backs play from behind punching with one hand while resting the other on the forward's back - this is why all your scores and all their scores come from frees.
20. A pint after Mass is the usual warm up for a game.
21. You can't field a team during the June because of Junior and Leaving Cert. Exams.
22. Your left corner back plays at No. 4 because he is one of only two people who can kick with their left foot.
23. Ditto No.7.
24. After every away match you can’t wait till next year "to get them bastards down to our pitch and give them a kickin'."
25. Your star player always has one other brother "that was even better but he couldn't stay off the drink".
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