Sunday was the day we had been building towards. It was our Supporters Competition, the idea a simple one, you turn out in a side built around the club you support. Ten teams at Newport Pagnell Town FC, all Over 50s. Some of the sides were made up entirely of the supporters of one club, and where we did not have enough of one we brought supporters of different clubs together to make up a team. The take-up for it was terrific, ten full sides, and the support around the pitch on the day was every bit as good. It ran the full length of the day, and by the time the sun was going down we had a winner. Liverpool came out on top, and they had to earn it the hard way.
If you like your football on a knife edge, this was the day for you. Both semi finals finished level and were settled on penalties. Then the final did exactly the same. Three times over, a game that had been fought out for the best part of an hour came down to who could hold their nerve from the spot, and three times over there was barely anything in it. Liverpool held theirs when it mattered and lifted the trophy, but any of the sides still standing at that point could have gone all the way.
That was the story of the whole day, really. Most of the games were close, plenty of them far closer than the scoreline might suggest, and there was real excitement running through it from the first whistle to the last. You would not have guessed, watching some of those tight finishes, that these are men in their fifties and sixties still running out and giving everything for a bit of silverware and the bragging rights that go with it.
A big thank you has to go to the captains. Getting ten sides organised, out on time and playing in the right spirit across a long day takes some doing, and every one of them played their part. The day does not happen without them, and it showed.
What has stayed with me most, though, is not the result. It is who was there. This brought players together from different venues, a lot of whom were meeting each other for the very first time. Men who had never so much as shaken hands in the morning were shoulder to shoulder by the afternoon, playing for the same team, sharing the same nerves at the same penalty shootouts. That is the part you cannot really plan for, and it is the part that made the day what it was.
Everyone is thoroughly shattered today, and rightly so. It was a proper day of football. But it has already got us thinking about the next one. Next year we would love to extend the invite to all of our venues, so that even more of our players get a day like this one, out on the pitch with people from across the group they would never otherwise have met.
These are the days that remind us why we still love it.