Post 68: 250706 Indoor at last

I came to South Korea in April of 2003 I think it was. Not long before I left I played a game of indoor football with a team I had been with for some years. When I got here I was hoping to find, start, play indoor football with little or no break. As simple as moving from one field to the next. I’ve been waiting and hoping that long. Well tonight my waiting came to an end.

Last week as my girlfriend and I were walking along the back roads of the town around us I stumbled upon not one but two indoor football stadiums. How excited was I? I waited over three years to play football here, to pass a ball, to save a goal, to cheer and dare I say it, even to yell. Tonight I got to do all that. Not so much of the yelling I suppose, there was no ref to yell at nor was there my brother to fight with as we played.

The field itself is smaller with goals about as wide but coming up to around the chest. There’s no height limit on the ball but it doesn’t do much good with the goals so low. You can’t score from outside the half and you can only kick with the inside of the foot, so no taking the opponents head off. But it’s just as fast and as with everywhere, there those one or two players who can run rings around you and score from anywhere.

There were three of us who went down, Steve, Trevor and myself. As of Wednesday there will be five. At first we weren’t sure how it would work, us not having a team and all. As long as you pay your 6 bucks you can play the whole night should you still be standing. Games are an hour long with a single half time, no quarters. Basically if you’re there and keen to play, you jump on a team and start messing around.

I certainly felt the year since my last game, if truth be told I was feeling it after the second minute. That didn’t stop me from tearing up the field in search of the ball occasionally. I was admittedly slower but after spending a bit of time in the goal got the feel for it again and managed to make a few decent saves and when out in the mix of it, managed to send up a few decent through balls for others to score. I didn’t find the back of the net myself, mind you I rarely found it when I was playing every week.

I have no idea what the score was as it wasn’t kept but that didn’t matter in the slightest. Not having a ref meant there were few stops, just a constant peppering of the goals, a constant hunt for the ball and a constant sweet. I loved every minute of it.