BaldieRobba's Movember Tale

This is a tale from the last Century, recounted to encourage any men reading to be aware of the importance of checking their knackers, and getting down to the Doctors if anything seems wrong....

If you enjoy reading it, please fell free to donate to my Movember page at 

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1330818

The first Saturday of November, 1999…

…was a beautiful morning. I was due to go and play for the Netterriers at Stockport in the morning, then watch Town in the afternoon, and the boys were happily occupied watching a video. Meanwhile, me & Kath were lying in bed having a cup of tea, and I was doing the standard man thing of readjusting my ahem, nether regions when I felt something funny. I had a further fumble, and yes, it seemed that my left testicle was, well, actually,… it was huge. Looking back, I have the memory of thinking that it seemed to fill up pretty much all of what Russell Brand would describe as my ‘ball bag.’ Hmmm, how to broach this one? ‘Kath, do you just want to have a feel at…’ Once we’d got past the predictable bit, she had a quick inspection & agreed that everything didn’t seem to be right. Better go to the doctors then, but of course, Stockport first.

My memory of this game is that it was a sunny and blustery day at a school somewhere in Stockport. They were a top set of lads who were quite closely matched with us, in terms of ability, but boasted a giant centre forward called Tony, who was about 7 feet tall. I usually got the job of trying to mark him a set-pieces. He always seemed to outjump me, for some reason. Anyway, it was a close game, with the wind playing havoc, especially at corners. From the left hand side of the pitch, the ball would suddenly stall in the box when the wind stopped it, and I placed myself, unmarked, in this spot for the first 2 attacking corners. Both dropped onto my right foot on the volley and I blasted both at the top left corner. Rather annoyingly, Stockport’s goalie clawed both out, and my record of not scoring at the right end since 1978 continued. Eventually, after a tight game with the scores at 1-1, they sneaked a goal, and then added a third as we chased the game. In the showers afterwards, … oh yeah, my giant bollock, must do something about that. But first, off to watch Town, who were top of the table and flying towards the Premier League, destroy Swindon. 4-0, I think.

When I got home that evening, turns out that Kath had managed to get hold of the Doctor, explained what was what, and made an urgent appointment for Monday morning. Cheers, dear, nice one, I would’ve got round to it, honestly. Eventually. Probably. 

 Monday morning, at the Doctors.

Dr Sharman is a nice bloke, and once I had outlined the problem, he said something like, oh, don’t worry, testicles come in all shapes and sizes, there’s probably nothing wrong at all, but I suppose I’d better take a quick look… Up onto the bed, kecks down doc putting on rubber gloves and then fumbling around. And then saying, ‘I know I said they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but not that size and not that shape. There’s something wrong with that.’

Trousers back on, and he tells me to sit down, and says he’s going to ring the hospital right away, and that I was to sit there until he’d made an appointment, and hopefully they’d be able see me straight away. And that I wasn’t to think the worst but it needed seeing to…

I suppose, in the back of your mind, you always play out the worst case scenario for any problem, and it never turns out so bad, but this was starting to look a bit worrying.

Once the doctor had got through to the hospital, it turned out that I had just missed the weekly clinic, and an appointment was made for the following Monday. Mild panic then ensued…

The following Monday…

Huddersfield Royal Infirmary was built in the late 1950’s and I presume the architect wanted to make it look all modern and futuristic. Therefore, he decided to build it out of highly modern concrete, and to a utilitarian plan, along the lines of stacking up a series of shoe boxes on top of each other. The intervening years have not been kind to this style of architecture – the concrete goes a strange mashed-potato gone rotten appearance, and wandering around dull corridors with no natural lighting never does much for the mood.

Anyway, I digress, it’s the following Monday, and I’m here for Dr Upsdell, the urology consultant’s clinic. Into the hospital, turn left, through the canteen, turn left again, down one of the long corridors, turn right, and oh, there’s a bog, may as well have a quick wee, don’t know how long this will take. Then on to the reception to give my name in, at which point the nurse produces a sample jar and asks me to fill it up. Ho hum, maybe the wee was a bad idea. And in any case, what do hospitals actually do with all the wee that they collect? I can’t imagine that there is any testicular tumour in my piddle, maybe they just pour it all into the back of the tea machine… Anyhow, the ‘reserve tank’ comes to my rescue, and I am able to provide a fresh draught for the cafeteria. Then, I’m directed to wait. The rest of the patients are all at least 70, and seem to be the ilk of Gentlemen who drive very slowly in Mini Metros whilst wearing flat caps. And the wives, when present appear to be the type of ladies who wear long sky-blue coats when wheeling shopping trolleys slowly around town. After a good while, we are all directed to cubicles, four on each side of the corridor, which are basically curtained enclosures with a bed and a chair in them. I sit on the chair and wait. Talking then starts in the cubicle opposite, where a Doctor appears and proceeds to talk to the old chap. Obviously, I can see nothing, but you can hear everything that is going on. And what is going on is that the old fella is having his prostate examined. I shan’t go into the details of how this is done, you may get the idea later in the tale if you don’t already know. So the Doctor, who is possibly Egyptian works along the cubicles, checking prostates as he goes (‘Honey, what did you do at work today?’ ‘Same old, same old Dahling, shoved my finger up lots of old men’s bumholes.’ ‘Marmite sandwich?’ ‘Ooh, yummy!’)

Eventually, he finally gets to the cubicle next to mine, where the old chap clearly has dementia, and his wife is trying to keep him calm. The doctor tells him to drop his trousers and bend over ‘WHY?’ ‘Don’t worry Harold, just do what the doctor says’ in soothing voice. Followed by a confused bellow from John Terry’s Granddad of ‘What are you doing? Get your finger out of there you dirty P*ki b*stard.’ Some conversations, you just do not want to be ever privy to, I wish I’d taken my Walkman to avoid hearing all of this… But it was also funny in a slightly horrifying way. Which sort of sums up dementia, vaguely.

After some while, the doctor, looking a bit flustered, appears through my curtains, and put on a fresh pair of gloves. Good, at least he changes his gloves. He wasn’t Dr Upsdell, he was the, err, registrar? House officer? Underling proctologist? Anyway, it’s the usual routine of dropping kecks, being fumbled with, err, umm, not sure… He says that it looks OK to him, but in view of the referral and concern expressed, he needs to refer me for an ultrasound examination as soon as possible… So not really any nearer finding out what’s going on.

At the X-Ray department.

Another week passes (urgent treatment, NHS style) before I am back at the HRI in the x-ray and radiography department, downstairs into the bowels of the concrete shoe box, turn right then left… It is a familiar haunt from when Kath was pregnant with the boys. We came here when she was 20 weeks gone with Marcus, full of excitement, then two weeks later were back again, as they weren’t happy about something, then back every couple of weeks as they got increasingly worried about stuff, up to the point when he arrived with 31 weeks gone. Once pregnant again with Nathan, they took no chances at all – Kath was back all the time for more and more ultrasound scans, and we even stopped getting the little polaroids they sell you in the end, we were getting cupboards full…

So I know where to find the ultrasound corridor, and am directed to a side room, told to change and put on a hospital robe – the first time I wore one of these, when I had my wisdom teeth out, I made the faux pas of putting it on the wrong way round, gaping at the front and just about covering my bum. So at least I’m sitting on the corridor with my gown on the right way round, and the November draft  blowing down the long corridor and up between my legs. Various heavily pregnant women are sitting uncomfortably around with the compulsory full bladders, no doubt all wondering what I’m doing there.

The corridor stretches off through the hospital for a huge distance, and I watch the comings and goings. At the very far end of the corridor, a lady in a white coat appears, slightly younger than me, and looking quite pretty from a distance. She strolls down the corridor, until about 40 yards away. Yep, very nice. 20 yards and closing. Oh no. Still coming. Must be aiming for the pregnant ladies. I’m bound to get a man for this. Surely? Past the pregnant ladies now, and closing in. Nice looking. Marching straight for me. Oh no. ‘Mr Stewart?’ Think ‘NO!’ but say ‘Yes, hello’ in a happy if slightly petrified voice, and we head off into a side room.

Up on the bed in the style of a pregnant lady, then I have to lift my gown up and she produces a giant bottle of gloopy stuff and squeezes about half a pint onto my balls. It’s cold. Extremely cold. This tends not to have a flattering effect on the nether regions for men... When I told my football team mates about this, I remember one of them asking ‘Did you, ha, get excited, huh! Cos she was like fit, huh…’ Sometimes I feel that the reality of being potentially quite ill doesn’t get through to your mates… It was certainly not a turn on. Especially in November.

 She then sets up the ultrasound machine, which is a bit like an old-fashioned computer hand scanner, and proceeds to scan me whilst studying the live feed on a computer screen. On the one hand, it’s kind of interesting to see what the inside of your scrotum looks like, and she zooms in on the large grey mass of my suspect ball, which is covered in… oh shit. Even I can see that there shouldn’t be those large white patches on it. The ultrasound lady says ‘There’s something wrong with that, I’ll need to send images of this to your consultant,’ –pauses to look at notes ‘Dr Upsdell, immediately.’

Images, oh yeah. ‘Can I have a copy of the polaroid?’ I ask. She laughs, and says that I can if I really want. I decide at the time that I don’t really want. ‘Hey kids, want to see a photo of that tumour that killed Dad?’

But now I’m OK, I wish that I had paid up my £3, if only to use as a Facebook profile pic.

Dr Upsdell rings up.

By now, it was clear that something was definitely up. The process of lump – doctor – consultant – ultrasound was one that could have just stopped at any stage if any of them thought that there was nothing the matter, but clearly something was wrong. The next steps were apparently operation – chemotherapy – radiotherapy – cure or death. Hopefully I’d get to bail out before the end of that little lot.

Life had been proceeding reasonably normally up to this point, with Town top of the Championship, winning every week by large margins & just having drawn Liverpool at home in the FA Cup. The game was a sell-out, I had my ticket, and the expectation was that we’d be too good for them. I also had a ticket for Town’s visit to Manchester City, who had splashed the cash, were below us in the table, despite their status as pre-season favourites, and really need to win to reel us in at the top of the league. If we won, we’d disappear over the horizon at the top of the league, and only a horrible series of disastrous cock-ups could stop promotion. That game too was a sell-out & I had to go down early to get my tickets before they all went.

The boys, meanwhile, were still toddlers. Marcus had just turned 3, and Nathan was approaching his second birthday and about to move out of his cot and into a ‘proper bed’. But first his room needed repainting, as it was nursery pink. A series of match pots were up behind the door whilst he decided which colour he fancied. Turned out he wanted ‘Jade’ mainly because he’d met a little girl called Jade on holiday in Tresco. Ah!

So I was probably doing toddler type things – playdo, videos of Thomas, etc etc, when the phone went and an extremely poshly spoken bloke  was on the other end. Dr Upsdell. Concerned about the ultrasound. Not sure what it was. Fearing the worst. Operation, then biopsy, then Cookridge hospital for chemo & radiotherapy. If needs be.

He regretted that this might make my hair fall out. Snigger.

Operation the following Monday. No lifting of any sort for 6 weeks afterwards.

In order to keep a lid on things at home, I used to play a lot of classical music, it really makes a nice calm atmosphere for little ones. So once he hung up, the cd player went straight on.

Thomas Tallis, sitting slightly stunned at the kitchen table. Deep breaths. Shit. Shit.

Vaughan Williams finishes, and toddlers appear. Game back on, stop feeling sorry for yourself you twat, get on with it…

Chaos, ladies crying in the kitchen, etc etc.

So hospital it was going to be, followed by 6 weeks of enforced idleness at a minimum, and maybe a lot worse (Cookridge?) waiting over the horizon. But first, pressing concerns. I needed to paint Nathan’s room by next Monday, which meant there was less than a week to do it. Which in turn meant Maine Road was going to get knocked on the head. Beside the critical matter of football, there was also the need to sort out looking after the lads. There was going to be no changing of nappies, putting toddlers in baths, pushing the pram up and down the hill to playgroup in Netherton with Marcus whilst carrying Nathan in the ‘backpack-carrier’, rough or tumbling or cuddling until well into the New Year, so Kath – who was of course stunned by the turn of events, but was keeping a stiff upper lip, in public at least, whilst clearly very worried – got leave of absence to be at home and a plan of sorts started to take shape.

In order to clear the decks to let me do the painting, she took the boys down to her Mum & Dad’s in Lichfield for the weekend, I went to town to buy some new pyjamas to bleed on in hospital, and a quick email round the football team produced many takers for the ticket for Man City, with Gaz relieving me of it rapidly. So I got blasting on with the decorating, whilst listening to the football, as Town effortlessly crushed Man City. Oh well, maybe get to Maine Road another year, if they ever manage to make it into the Premier League with us…

Nowadays, if I was ill, I suppose I would just let people know by Tweeting something like ‘Having ball chopped off due to tumour, hope don’t die’ and people may reply by saying things like ‘Hugs’ or ‘Bummer’. But back in the olden days, news tended to spread by word of mouth, and once the lovely ladies who ran the playgroup found out what was happening, the word spread rapidly around the village.

I was now overtaken by a kind of surreal calm, in which decorating, or buying new pj’s, or getting my match ticket to a deserving home seemed to take on an overwhelming importance. It wasn’t about being in denial; it was more a case of accepting that what was going to happen would happen anyway, and deciding to flow along with it. One step at a time. It was rather like being in the centre of a hurricane, as pretty much everyone else I knew seemed to be anything but calm. Every day at home seemed to be punctuated by visits from people who I sort of knew, but didn’t really consider to be close friends, who would embarrassedly come into the kitchen for a coffee and usually burst into tears at some point. ‘Eye of the storm’ is my abiding memory of this week, along with quite a lot more classical music.

Dad, meanwhile, said ‘Just because it’s a tumour doesn’t mean it’s malignant, son.’ Fingers crossed on that one, Fatha.

Anyway, Kath and the lads came back on Sunday afternoon, and Nathan toddled up into his room, looking first behind the door where the match pot had been, and then looking around as if the paint had magically spread over the walls by itself, with an amazed expression on his face. A tomorrow was the next step, hospital, operation, but that’s another story.

Hospital, Monday.

Ah, back to the certainty of hospital, the comedy of illness in naughty places, and away from all the drama of crying visitors in the kitchen…

I eventually land in Ward 1 (turn right, right again, down one floor and straight on) after finally persuading the Admissions Office to let me in (‘Computer says no…’ for about 15 minutes before they relented and accepted that I had just turned up to have a bollock chopped off on a whim). The rest of the ward was full of men aged 70 or more, all having things done to their prostates. The sight of a new person, and one who was young enough to pay his own bus fares caused a bit of excitement, and a steady procession of old chaps wandered over to my bed for a chat.

First up was an Aussie in the next bed, visiting relos in the UK when his prostate packed up, so his relos got to visit him in hospital instead. He regaled me with enormous detail about his treatment, having a laser poked down his jap’s eye, how his tumour was shrinking, and so on. When he found out what was up with me, he laughed and asked if I played cricket. Nope, not any more, football. ‘Ah well, won’t matter if anyone kicks you in the nuts now, will it mate?’ Bless. Old chaps continued to drift over and I got to hear a great deal more about the many ways in which prostate cancer can be treated. ‘Unpleasantly’ would about sum them up.

The nurses were pretty insistent that I did nothing, so I just lay on my bed, reading a book for the first time in about 3 years. Every 30 minutes or so, a lady would come round with a tea trolley and insist, in true Mrs Doyle fashion, that you had a cup of tea. I guess they were trying to keep all the old fellas waterworks flowing. Blissful and rather relaxing, if you ignored the impending trip to surgery.

A rather spotty and very young student doctor turned up to clerk me in, taking blood pressure, pulse and so on, and we had a nice natter. He wanted to be a doctor because he liked meeting people, and on looking at my obs, said I clearly played a lot of sport and was very fit. Those were the days J

In the evening, after Kath had been in to say hello, the hour passed when I was banned from partaking of the tea trolley, and about 7 o’clock,  a porter turned up and wheeled me off down the corridor to surgery. Being wheeled around on a bed is a bit odd, as you catch random blasts of telly every time you go past an open door, and the strip lights on the ceiling rather whizz past in dizzying fashion. Arriving at theatre, I asked if I was going to get a premed, but no, these had now been banned as they were seen of no clinical use. So no free drug trip on the NHS this time, oh well. I was wheeled into the anaesthetist’s room outside the operating theatre and got chatting to the gas man. I told him that when I had my wisdom teeth out, the anaesthetist had a nice routine where he pretended to drop the stretcher just as you passed out. He looked shocked. How unprofessional. ‘You’ll feel a sharp scratch on your hand and count backwards from 10.’ Scratch. 10. Don’t drop the trolley. 9, 8, 7, chop the right bit off, 6, 5, i.e. the left one, 4… black, inky sleep.

‘Wake up…’

‘…wake up, err’ – consults clipboard – ‘Robin. Ooh, that’s a coincidence, my boyfriend was called Robin. Such a cute name.’

Looking upwards, there’s a rather nice looking nurse looming just above my head. Well done subconscious, what a great dream.

Except, of yeah opera… A quick panic, have they chopped off the right bit? A quick feel, yes, they got the right bit. And it doesn’t hurt much, aside from a dull ache. The pain seems to be coming from my stomach. Not what I expected. Coming to steadily now, John Hurt in alien with something fastened to my face. Off it goes, that’s better. Now I can talk. The nurse is a bit worried by my outbreak of thrashing around, and asks if I am OK. I tell her that I was just making sure the right bit had been chopped off, and she laughs. A lot. This is all rather good. In fact, in my slightly addled- by-anaesthetic state, I can suddenly say no wrong. Pretty much every line I come out with seems to be deeply comical, and the nurse is in stitches. Of course, because I was so groggy, I can now remember none what we were joshing about.

The nurse is sat at the top of my bed on a chair with wheels on, and to either side of me are two other blokes, with nurse sat at the top of their beds. Both are fast asleep. I keep up a steady banter with my nurse, and she keeps on laughing. Blimey, that anaesthetic is great! After a minute or so, there is a clatter of chair wheels and the other two nurses wheel over to join in the banter. Blimey, is this for real? Maybe they’ve got some cans stashed in the recovery room and someone will put some music on… I begin to feel very tired. One of the nurses says something like ‘Ooh, his eyes are going…’  and the oxygen mask is plonked back on my face. My nurse says that I really need my mask on and should be quiet, lie back and stop telling jokes. The other nurses trundle off as their patients wake up and the party atmosphere seems to fade away. Good stuff, that anaesthetic…

I am wheeled back to the ward, slowly coming back to my senses, and am plonked back in bed. I then spend a fitful night’s sleep, awakened every two hours by the dripping water sound as Aussie fella has his prostate rinsed with antibiotics.

Once the day dawns, I am sent for a shower, my dressing is checked (a line of staples in my stomach, who would’ve thought it!) and Kath comes to take me home. Gingerly I walk upstairs to see the boys, and Nathan, standing on a window seat, decides on a spot of instant rough and tumble, jumping for me like Superman. I have to catch him, can’t just let him fall. I favour my good side. Shades of Hugh Davies at Murrayfield in ’86… Ouch. But home. And still standing. Sort  of… Ouch.

Aftermath

I went to see the Forbidden City in Beijing in the 1980’s, where the Emperor of China lived with about 10,000 women and no other men. Except for the eunuchs. They could be trusted to not go messing around with the concubines.  The guide even took us to see the special chair where eunuchs were made, which was a sort of throne with a large hole in the middle, through which bits would be dangled and the shears swiftly applied. About half of the prospective eunuchs died in the process.

I quite reasonable expected the operation to deal with the tumour in my dangly bit to concentrate on just chopping off the said dangly bit, so it was a real surprise to find quite a large scar running diagonally through my waist, and my dangling bits untouched, although now only half full, so to speak. Apparently, the surgeon cut a hole, fished out the top of some bit of piping and pulled out the whole appendage through my stomach. It didn’t hurt at all, though the scar from the operation was terribly uncomfortable, having been fastened up by a line of metal staples, which tended to get snagged on my undies. They also insisted that I needed to wear a pair of tights, to reduce the chance of dvt. For six weeks.  You never really notice how important your ‘core’ is until it falls out of action. Suddenly I could lift absolutely nothing, and walking up the stairs was a struggle. Pick up a toddler? No. Light the fire? Nope. Kettle? Hmm, just about. So I just sat around, whilst Kath beetled around, running the household, me unable to help. Totally against the grain and very irritating.

I just about felt up to going to the Liverpool match, though it did take about 15 minutes to get up to my seat. Town were still crushing all comers, while Liverpool were a mix of a few famous players (Michael Owen), some local youngsters (Carragher, Matteo, Gerrard, who they?) and some rubbish Africans with strange haircuts (Song, Kamara…).  An upset was on the cards, and the ground was full. From the off Liverpool lost the ball and Town poured forwards. Suddenly we were 4 on 1, had to be a goal, first minute… I jump from my seat and a searing pain spreads. Missed! Shit. Ouch. Sellars, you should’ve passed. Ouch! A quick check for blood, the staples have held out, but better not push it. I resolve to stay nailed to my seat for the rest of the match, not standing up, come what may. The Town players take pity on me and contrive to miss about 15 clear chances, just to save me. Cheers Clyde, mate. Twenty thousand other people might have been cross with you, but I was secretly relieved. Sort of. Though the staples may have held if you had aimed for the goal rather than Row Z. Liverpool score soft goals in both halves (Jon Dyson & Kev Gray, sigh) and the match turns into an anti-climax. At least we’ll be playing them next season. And those stockings kept my legs lovely and warm.

The following day, Kath’s mum Muriel arrived to help out, and Kath went back to work. Muriel continued with the beetling, and I continued with the idling. The District Nurse came to take out my staples, using a staple remover, no less and brought me a fluffy blue ball bearing the legend ‘I’ve been very brave’ from all at the doctor’s surgery, who were all apparently ‘worried’ about me. Really kind and thoughtful, and the ‘ball’ bit was quite good too. It lived in our kitchen for years afterwards…

About lunchtime one day towards the end of the week, the phone went. I hobbled over to pick it up. Posh voice. ‘Mr Stewart? It’s Mr Upsdell, we’ve got the results of the biopsy on your tumour…’

Crucifixion? Ah, no, freedom please…

Once I climbed on Gimmer crag in the Lake District with a 1500 foot drop under my legs and a big yellow rescue helicopter flew past about a thousand feet below me. I made my legs wobble. So did answering the phone to Mr Upsdell. A quick vision of vomiting into a cardboard tray in Cookridge Hospital formed in my head. Maybe my eyebrows would fall out during the treatment he was about to outline.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ said the posh voice. ‘The biopsy found a tumour and it was non-malignant.’

What? Wasn’t expecting that. Standing slightly stunned by the phone. He told me it was good news, which was a bit of a f*cking understatement!

Upsdell went on to explain that the tumour was caused by something very rare called ‘testicular atrophy’, which was almost unknown in men my age, being normally only seen in the very elderly. So there you go, I officially had the body of a 34 year old, but the left testicle of an eighty year old. Though obviously not anymore, it was in a petri dish somewhere! He told me that no further treatment was warranted and that he was discharging me from his list. I could think of nothing to say when he invited questions, so he hung up. I immediately got hold of Kath to tell her the good news.

Earlier in my blog, I talked about how rapidly bad news seemed to travel, and within a couple of days of my operation being arranged, loads of people turned up at the house, quite upset. Which was both nice, as you never really know if everyone you know really thinks that you are a bit of a twat, and all rather odd too. In contrast, good news seems to spread more slowly. At the weekend, it was Nathan’s second birthday party at Skallywags, a rather dingy local play gym. I usually quite enjoyed these, as it was a chance to go on a bouncy castle, jump in a ball pool and be otherwise puerile. However, I had to stay well out of the way due to my scar, so went to sit in the corner. By myself, out of harm’s way. But it seemed that people were avoiding me. Eventually Liz wandered over, apologised for asking, and asked how my treatment was going. Fine. False alarm. Gentle hug, avoiding my scar. And so the good news started to travel.

Full circle

This story started with a football match, and six weeks after my operation, it’s going to finish with one. It’s half four on a Saturday morning in mid-January when Nige comes to collect me in a mini-bus and we head to Town to collect the rest of the lads. Amazingly, we have a full turn out and we head off down to sarf London to play against Crystal Palace supporters, and then watch Town at Selhurst Park. So back to normal, kit bag slung over my shoulder and heading out with my mates, nice one. We make the M25 a couple of hours before kick off, and then very slowly make our way round to Croydon, arriving late. Into the changing rooms, quickly get changed, show the lads my scar and then the standard team talk from Paul. ‘I want you to keep your shape lads. Keep your shape. For f*cks sake, just for once, keep your f*cking shape.’ It was the same team talk before every match, and, of course, we never kept our shape.

Unbelievably exciting to be lining up on a football pitch again, have a quick check out of the opposition. Hmm, that centre forward looks familiar, he also plays for Watford, and we had a right barney with them a couple of years before. And, even worse, he has both a pony tail and coloured boots, and is warming up by doing keepy uppies. First 50-50 challenge and you’re getting it, you twat. When he’s limping into work on Monday… <snigger>. Anyway, we’re off on a foggy morning, flat pitch surrounded by terraced houses, male shouting and cursing echoing. We get a bright start and win a corner, which is usually quite a dodgy time, as team mates ignore that stuff about keeping shape and drift into the box. Soon, there’s just me & geriatric centre-half Charlie marking My Little Pony, who is trying to be all keen and make little runs to get a couple of yards of space. I get bored of following him, and he checks out onto the touchline. ‘You got him Rob?’ ask Charlie. Yep, I’ve got him covered, perfect angle on him. Of course, the corner fails to clear the first defender and Palace pour out. There’s only one place the ball is going to go, in behind me towards Mr Ponytail, and we hold the half way line to see if he strays offside. He doesn’t and the ball is played through. I’ve given him about 10 yards space and running diagonally should see me arrive at the same time as he meets the through ball. Man and ball, My Little Pony in a crumpled heap on the touchline is the plan. Except. Except I can’t run fast enough. I don’t really seem to be able to run at all anymore. He’s not fast, but I get nowhere near him and he’s in on goal. Charlie to the rescue, splintering tackle, whistle blasts, free kick on the edge. I feel like I’m about to collapse. The wall forms up, a row of lads nervously linking arms and covering their bollocks. I don’t cover mine and lend my hand to Matt. The wall gets the sniggers. The Palace lads look puzzled. ‘You can aim at ‘is bollocks ‘cos there’s nothing left to hit,’ says Matt.

12 minutes. My comeback match lasted 12 minutes and I had to go off. My chest felt like it was on fire, I couldn’t run, and it hurt when I tried to put my foot through the ball. The game finished 1-1 and we headed off to the pub, and then to Selhurst. Since I’d been in hospital, the wheels had suddenly come off at Town. The super-rich owner had legged it to Barbados, the players suddenly realised that moving from, for example,  Ajax playing in the Champions League to Town wasn’t actually that clever and had stopped trying. Potato-headed manager Steve Bruce had decided that talismanic striker Marcus Stewart (hmm, good name, btw) was, in fact, really rubbish and needed to be flogged. Immediately. To anyone. Because Viv Anderson thought he was no good. So Bruce was hawking him around, faxing every club in the top two Divisions to see if there were any takers. Only Ipswich were interested. But surely, we all thought, no-one could ever be so stupid as to sell their star player to promotion rivals. All was well for 45 minutes, Stewart scored twice and we sang his name constantly. How could he ever leave? The second half saw us collapse and ship two soft goals, and at the final whistle, Stewart waved goodbye. The following week, he scored the winner for Ipswich. Against Town. And then he scored to seal Ipswich’s promotion, as Town missed out. He then scored 23 goals in his first season in the Prem, whilst Town got relegated. Good bit of transfer business there, Mr Bruce, worked out great. For Ipswich.

It took me about a year before I felt fully fit again, but life quickly got back into its routine. Thanks for sticking it to the end of this tale, which is told only to encourage you to check your bollocks regularly for lumps, or if you a lady, check your significant others… And if something is wrong, don’t mess about, get straight down to the doctors. The experience may well be comically embarrassing, but you can keep it to yourself, it isn’t compulsory to go blabbing about it all over the internet!