both impact and exertion based. It once took me about six months to work out that experiencing extreme shooting pains in your knee before during and after playing football was perhaps a sign that something properly wrong. Stopping playing for a hit felt slightly naughty. Was this really allowed? Was it really this easy? Second, there is the question of commitment. The number one killer of Sunday League and five a side careers is having something more important to do, usually involving garden centres, or nice walks in the country, or awkward and depressing in-laws-to-be lunches (which can be happily abandoned later in life once an official truce of un-duckable commitment is entered). She may well complete you. She may be 'The One'. But she is also unlikely to encourage regular weekend sodding-off combined with a mouldering, surly, exhausted, sofa-crashing return. Finally, you may simply have lost your zing and your mojo. You may have fallen out of love with the game. This is often the result of close study of those who do the opposite and keep on keeping on right to the end. Taciturn, grey-haired quantity surveyors called Bob, always the first to arrive and last to leave, powerfully doe-eyed with silent neediness. The pre-divorce male, with his constant wife-grumbles and his dramatically unannounced appearance on your doorstep carrying a holdall and a duvet one Saturday afternoon. And of course the man who has nothing else, often the skipper, usually a 30-somehting parental lodger, perhaps this is even