I play 5 side every Tuesday night, just a knockabout with some blokes I used to work with, but one of them takes it VERY seriously.

He is quite skilful but has piled the beef on in the last year or so since he packed in smoking. He now resorts to doing over-the-top Stuart Pearce type tackles where he takes the man if he doesn't get the ball, often causing quite bad injuries to people.

As it's an open air pitch we don't play head height, and early on he jumped straight through the back of me when I went up for a header. A few minutes later the ball was about to drop on my head/chest kindly on the wing, and I saw him taking a run up from the corner of my eye. Sure enough he was attempting to clatter me off the ball, so at the last minute I simply took a step backwards.

He had obviously banked on a soft landing (ie me) but as he missed he landed twisting his ankle and fell onto the side wall boards quite heavily. Meanwhile I collected the ball which he hadn't played for and carried on the game. He didn't try it again. Incredibly satisfying.

i love it when that happens!!

We were warming up and this nutter from my team tried to drop kick me. Somehow I did a little flick (I was very pleased with myself) and got out of the way. Then I noticed he had metal studs on, if he'd have got me I'd have been f*cked. He mysteriously vanished from the team from then onwards.

You get a lot of toss-pots like him at 5-a-side, they're called failed footballers and they often have attitude problems and like smashing people. I could tell you lots of 5-a-side stories, such as they time I faced someone who was wearing a Darlow shirt, walked in the changing room to see a about 5 people in Darlow shirts (both in Leeds) and also the time a fellow Pools fan walked past me and I said look at my shirt, I was too tired to realise that I'd changed my shirt and taken my Pools shirt off, I bet I looked like a right mong.