Musings From The Shitter: Volume Eighteen

Sometimes, It’s Just a Puddle of Mud

There’s something simultaneously absurd and quietly profound about lying on your back in a puddle of cold, brown water, mud sneaking its way up past your ears, your chest heaving in that way that reminds you just how much you’re still alive, your lungs burning, legs feeling like they’ve been in a slow-motion battle with gravity for days. You just threw yourself at a ball—maybe even missed it—but somehow that’s irrelevant. You went. And in this context, that’s the whole point.

This was Saturday. Just been.

To someone on the sideline…maybe a mate holding a coffee, maybe a stranger scrolling through their phone…it probably looked like a mistake. Like two grown men in the waning light of youth playing some local game that nobody will remember in a week, let alone a year. But I turned my head and saw my mate beside me, also flat on his back, sharing the puddle, sharing the silence.

No words exchanged. Just a half-smile that said something like:
“We did it.”
Still breathing. Still here. Still in it.

That moment was tiny. But it carried the weight of something enormous…maybe the fragile persistence of youth trapped inside an ageing frame, maybe just the beauty of two idiots in mud, who hadn’t yet learned to stop playing.

Ridiculous. Muddy. Perfect.

I used to chase silverware.
Hell, I guess I still do in some ways. That old fire doesn’t just vanish. There’s a kind of raw satisfaction in holding a trophy…proof that your time, your pain, your effort meant something beyond just showing up. That for at least one fleeting moment, you were better than the rest.

But these days? The value’s shifted. I get more out of the entire occasion than the silverware itself.
From the anticipation, the ache in my muscles, the laughter breaking through the pain.
From the simple act of showing up.

It’s a shift no one prepares you for. You realise the stories you’re telling yourself…and others…aren’t about winning anymore. They’re about the time you showed up hungover, the cross that veered into a cow paddock, the puddle you found yourself lying in, staring up at the sky, feeling like a pair of philosophers disguised as footballers.

Football starts as magic.
You’re young and your body just moves…no thinking required. You chase the ball like your life depends on it. The pitch is your whole world. Scoring feels like bending reality. You win, you lose, you fall, you get back up, and do it all again.

Then life hits.
Jobs. Family. Injury. Bills. Anxiety without a name.
Football fades or mutates…becomes about status, tactics, how long your legs can carry you before they betray you.

But if you’re lucky, it circles back. It becomes what it always was…a way to stay human. To move. To connect. To scream. To laugh. To feel something real in a world that constantly pushes you to numbness.

That’s what Feilding United Masters is for me now.
Not just a team. A ritual. Sacred nonsense.

I spend 8 to 10 hours a week with these men. Not for fitness. Not for glory.
Because I need to yell across a field and hear a yell back.
Because I need to do something pointless that still matters.

At some point in the game…legs heavy, brain sluggish…I miskicked the ball. Ugly. Unforgivable. I yelled before anyone else could:
“That’s shit!”

From the sideline, an opposition player called out:
“You should sub, bro. You look done.”

Normally, I’m quick with a comeback…sharp words like thrown knives. But this time, I held back. Let the silence linger. I wanted to mean what I said.

I looked him in the eye and said:
“I’m still breathing, bruv. The body’s still letting me do things it probably shouldn’t. Why would I want to stop now?”

I looked at him, really looked. The sideline looked like a place he’d chosen. A place I didn’t want.

That sentence carried everything I’d been feeling but hadn’t put into words.

I don’t want to watch from the sideline.
Not yet.
Not when my legs still work.
Not when my lungs still burn.
Not when puddles still feel this good.

This isn’t always about football.
It’s about space. Permission.
To yell. To laugh. To chase. To feel tired in the most honest way possible.

Sometimes it’s about the puddle.