Extra time

Third in the group. Then out of the Champions League, 2-0. Then out of the Europa League too, 0-3. Two competitions gone, back to back, before the heat of the day had even properly set in. That was that, we reckoned. Photos taken on the assumption it was the last one. Kit half off. Someone already mentally on the train home.

Except there was another game.

By Monday morning I'd have told you the weekend was over regardless of how that third game went. It wasn't. My other team had a match of its own still to explain.

Part one: the football

Work does a charity five-a-side tournament every so often. Nobody makes me organise it, I just do, off my own bat, because I love the game and I love an excuse to get people playing it. Mostly that means a Teams group chat, a fair few last-minute call-ups, and more squad shake-ups than any sane five-a-side team should require. Games run about ten minutes each, which is the only reason a full day of group stage plus three separate cup competitions is even possible before everyone's legs give out. Our first two outings, years back, we had no official kit at all, just whoever turned up in whatever they owned. Then a two-year hiatus. When we came back it was a proper reset: new recruits, a new identity, and somehow a run all the way to the Champions League semi-final in March this year. This tournament came round quickly after that, and by the time it did, several of our strongest players were unavailable, committed elsewhere to summer sports, tennis mostly. So the squad that turned up in August looked rather different to the one that had done so well in March.

Two of us have been there for every outing since the reset: me, and the keeper. The kit, pink shirt included, arrived with the reset back in March, and it already had a decent story attached before this one: a Champions League semi-final, the best outing yet, and still nothing to actually take home at the end of it.

Three group games. First one gone before we'd loosened up: 1-0, and not even a good goal against us, a needless pass back into our own box in injury time that our keeper had no business fielding. Everyone shouting don't touch it. He touched it. Penalty. Some fundamental rules of the game were being relearned live, in real time.

Bounced straight back, though. 3-2, and the winner arrived from something that shouldn't work outside of a five-a-side pitch: a half-volley from the halfway line, dropped perfectly into the bottom corner. The other team went on to win an entire cup of their own later that afternoon. We beat them. Best twenty minutes of football any of us will play this year, in a car park behind a leisure centre, for charity.

Third game stings more than the final score admits. 1-0 up with an actual screamer, held for a good stretch against a side who'd go on to top the whole group and win the tournament outright. They clawed it back to 2-1. Then the bit nobody's proud of, courtesy of our newest recruit. To be fair to him, he's genuinely one of the best new signings we've had in a long time, sharp on the ball, reads the game well, the lot. Everyone's got a weakness though, and his turned out to be the back pass rule specifically, like it never came up in his footballing education until this exact moment. He played almost the same mistake that had cost us the first game, a back pass with no real plan behind it, expecting a whistle that never came. The ball rolled apologetically into our own net. Own goal. 3-1. Fundamental rules of the game, still being learned live, by more than one of us this month.

One win, two defeats. We assumed that meant a consolation bracket. The actual standings said otherwise. We were still in the Champions League.

The tournament runs its knockout stages the way actual European football does. Lose early enough and you don't go home, you get parachuted down into a second competition. Lose that too, there's a third net waiting underneath. We needed all three, and got there exactly how the opening of this post already told you. That third game, the one nobody wanted, turned out to matter more than the first two combined.

Nobody was thrilled walking over to it. We went anyway, dreaming mostly of the pub.

Quarter-final of the bottom bracket: 1-0. First scoreline of the day that didn't come with an asterisk. Bodies started going into places they hadn't gone into all day. It made us play like a team rather than seven individuals who happened to be wearing the same shirt.

Semi-final: 1-1, penalties. Our goal was a proper one, a perfectly timed volley off a lovely assist, the kind of finish that gets replayed in the group chat for a week afterwards. The shootout is the bit I'd pay to relive. On the decisive kick our keeper didn't even move. Didn't need to. The shot came back off the post entirely under its own steam. Through to the final.

The final was chaos. Six goals, and for long spells we were behind rather than in front, chasing a game we'd assumed thirty minutes earlier we'd already lost. Our top scorer got his hat-trick, but it was the last of the three that mattered. A goal in the dying seconds, set up by an assist that deserves its own line of credit, levelling it at 3-3 and sending the whole thing to penalties for the second time in an hour. I'd come on as a substitute partway through and spent a few minutes genuinely believing we'd already lost 3-2 before someone caught me up on the actual situation. Then the whistle went. Penalties. Again.

First one of ours goes in, keeper guesses right, power wins anyway. Their turn, and the referee tells the taker the entire tournament rests on this kick, a genuinely strange thing to say to a nervous man about to strike a football. One run-up, shot to the bottom left. Read the whole way. Saved.

We had the trophy. Bottom bracket of a charity five-a-side tournament, and I have never in my life meant "we won" more sincerely.

Same kit that went to a Champions League semi-final in March and came home with nothing to show for it. Weaker squad, worse bracket, and somehow this is the one that ends with silverware. Football doesn't owe anyone a fair outcome, and every so often it hands you a properly generous one instead.

None of this happens without a reason behind it. Every outing raises money for a different cause. Birmingham Children's Hospital one year. CRY another, which funds research and screening for heart problems in young people, and matters to me more than I can easily explain, because I lost my brother to a heart attack last year. This time round it was CALM. Add it all up across the years and it comes to around £600 raised. Sounds small written down like that. Never feels small on the day.

I love this game. Properly love it, in a way I don't have the same words for anywhere else in my life. Even now, even with a body that reminds me most mornings it isn't twenty-five anymore, put me on a five-a-side pitch chasing a ball and I play like nothing's changed. Trust me on this one: the fitness is there. It's always there, as long as there's a ball to run after.

Training log back home calls Friday the week's hard session. That undersold it slightly.

Part two: the month, warts and all

July was rough. Sleep was genuinely crap, night after night, and when the system put me on a deload I didn't argue. Made sense. I felt wrecked, the numbers said I looked wrecked, everyone agreed I was wrecked. Fine. Rest.

Then sleep started coming good again. Proper nights, one after another. And I was still on deload.

Told myself there was a reason. There's always a reason if you trust the thing enough to go looking for one instead of just asking why out loud. Another week went past. Still nothing. Decent sleep, decent numbers, still being told to sit on my hands.

Eventually I actually looked. Pulled the numbers myself instead of taking the summary on trust. Sleep: good. HRV: normal. Everything green, no flags, nothing wrong with me at all. And the plan still said rest, still called it a second consecutive recovery week like that phrase meant something.

What the fuck.

The system had a bug. Not a cautious system making a defensible call I happened to disagree with. A bug. It had been telling me I needed rest for reasons that had stopped being true weeks earlier, and I'd believed it because it sounded like reasoning rather than what it actually was, which was old code that had never been told to stop.

I'd already fixed this once, or thought I had. Gone in, ripped the bad logic out, tested it, watched it behave. Except I'd only fixed the version that runs most weeks. There's a separate version that only wakes up once a month, and that one had sat there untouched with the exact same fault, waiting for its turn. Its turn happened to be this Monday, and it duly told me to do nothing, in exactly the same broken language as the bug I thought was dead.

Fixed it properly this time. Both versions, not just the one I happened to be looking at.

And because I was already annoyed and already in there, I found a second thing entirely: my recovery data had been silently dead for the best part of a fortnight. No error, no warning, just the same stale numbers handed back day after day as if they were fresh. So for two weeks I'd been getting advice built on numbers that hadn't actually moved, on top of a system that would have ignored good numbers anyway. Reconnected it. Watched real numbers land for the first time in a while.

I don't love how long I sat there trusting a broken system over how I actually felt. Lesson taken.

Here's the thing that's been sitting with me since Friday, though. On a football pitch, whatever age I actually am now, with someone's studs regularly finding my ankles, I play like I'm twenty-five. No talking myself into it. The fitness just turns up, because the ball's there and I want it.

That same thing has never once turned up for a Tuesday night training run around Winsford. It should be easier without someone kicking you, not harder. Answers on a postcode. Ted, that one's yours to mull over.

Next up: a stopwatch, a trail at Delamere, and a number I've been quietly building toward since March 2022. No bug report needed for that one, I hope.