Let’s admit it. Football is a great sport, when you get the right number of people. It will often boil down to a pointless kick–about when the numbers are not sufficient. It is worst when the numbers are uneven; players on the bigger team tend not to care too much and players on the smaller team will run out of steam in about 5 minutes. What follows is a walking–paced game that no one wants to play.

The process to booking a court is actually very simple. You book a slot at the sports center, then you proceed to arrange a match, and try you hardest to find the right number of people. And how exactly is one meant to go about looking for the right numbers—and what exactly is the right number? If we are playing amongst ourselves, then for a 5–aside football game we need 10; if we are playing against some other team then obviously we need at least 5, maybe 6 or 7 for substitutes, and that goes for the other team as well.

I like to be cautious, so I tend to call up as many people as I can assuming that some of them will not turn up (which doesn’t happen often for my own team). This creates problems where some people will have to sit out during the game. Tough. I would rather have a good game and have a 10 minute rest than having a pointless kick–about. The problem for me, then, is the other team.

Of all the teams I have played with or against in Bristol, there is one team that just doesn’t understand or respect the whole idea of booking a court and arranging matches. It is not a trivial matter. I find it extremely rude to claim you have enough players, only to change your mind 1 hour before the indoor booking slot. It’s difficult to believe that, suddenly, the 5 or 6 people that you have on your team have separate engagements, or injuries, or both.

So, with 1 hour to spare, I have to work all my contacts, depending on what I decide to do. I may cancel the booking, in which case I have to apologetically call my friends that the match is cancelled, or I may look for more players where I have to find 2 people here and 3 people there, and hopefully we’ll have enough in the end. It often frustrates me to the point that I wish I could have played with the people that stood me up, so as to ensure them never playing football again, or at least never with me.

It didn’t and doesn’t have to be like this. It should be easy to motivate your team, and the other team, to have a fun and loving game of 5–aside football. It is not hard to gather 5 people to play, and it is equally not hard to have the manners to call the other team when you don’t have enough players with ample time, so they can decide what to do because of your inability to get enough players to come at all.