Meet the Squad: The Over 70s Taking On England

Rab Anderson

A Glasgow boy who followed Rangers from the Ibrox terraces, and who has kept going through more than most.

I was born and grew up in Glasgow, where most boys played in the streets and in the playground. I followed Glasgow Rangers and was at Ibrox every other Saturday. I wasn’t very good at playing football, but I was very enthusiastic. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I joined a team to make up the numbers. I played in defence, where it was thought I would do least damage. The chap who ran the team was a semi pro. He gave me some coaching and literally overnight improved my game 100 per cent. I was strong and fast, and now attackers found it hard to get past me.

I moved to England at 18 and joined a team in Corby. I played left back despite being right footed, then progressed into midfield. I modelled myself on Bryan Robson and John Wark. I loved being box to box. I moved again to striker and finished top goalscorer in successive seasons. As I got older I moved back down the pitch and ended my career as a sweeper, aged 52, mainly due to a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.

The first few years were tough, and I took up running and the gym to keep fit with my eldest daughter, who sadly passed away with a brain tumour. I gave it up as I thought I was too old. Then I joined a group called Man v Fat at 62. Then I saw the advert on Facebook for over 50s. I really deliberated on whether to join. At 66, and having been diagnosed with prostate cancer the year before, I figured I was too old, but I decided to give it a go, and it is really enjoyable.

I have a wee bit of legs still and a football brain. I know my limitations, so I come well strapped up. I am getting fitter and losing weight. I am really excited and looking forward to playing against the England team, to see how I measure up. Everyone is supportive, and it is great to have the banter and camaraderie again. I would love to keep going till 70 at least.

Kevin Whiteman

Football in the blood, a lifelong Evertonian, and a promise to wear white boots.

Football sort of runs in my blood. My dad was offered terms with Spurs as a schoolboy but declined. He went on to play at a decent level and in the fifties played in an exhibition match alongside Sir Stanley Matthews.

Clearly those football genes skipped my generation, but I played for all my school teams and for my village, Cogenhoe Utd, until the late 1970s when, just as we moved up to the UCL, wine, women and song (sadly a much higher percentage of wine and song) became my focus and I stopped playing for several years, except for the occasional season with one pub side or another.

In my late forties I started playing kickabout games and five a side at work, aiming to still be playing when I got to fifty. I did that, and have kept increasing the target. When I had the opportunity to join the Hellraisers I grabbed it, as a great way to prolong my playing career.

As an Evertonian of more than 60 years, I understand that pleasure and football don’t always coincide, but I am enjoying football now more than at any time since I was seventeen.

As a boy my footballing hero was Alan Ball, and I had a pair of white boots. I guess playing against a bona fide England team will be my Stanley Matthews moment, and I will pull on a pair of white boots for the match in honour of Mr Ball, and because they only cost a tenner from Skechers.

Sam Shabbir

Away from the game for decades while he built a business, until a Facebook advert reignited the spark.

Football has always been a great passion. Like most, it started on the school and college pitches and local parks, just endless days of running around, kicking the ball about and loving every second of the game.

As I got older, that passion took me into the heart of local grassroots football, Sunday morning league. Playing for local pubs and clubs right through to the early 1990s was brilliant. It was competitive, hard hitting, and full of camaraderie. There was nothing quite like stepping out onto a crisp, muddy Sunday morning pitch with your mates, ready to give it everything for ninety minutes.

Life, however, has a way of taking over. When I launched my coach travel business, work naturally became the priority. Early mornings, late nights and weekend trips meant my time on the pitch began to dwindle. What started as playing now and then eventually turned into stopping altogether. For decades the boots stayed packed away, and football shifted from something I did to something I just watched from afar.

Then came the turning point. Scrolling through Facebook one day, an advert popped up for over 50s football. I was actually over 60 at the time, but seeing that post ignited a spark I hadn’t felt since the 90s. A voice in my head said, why not, give it a go.

Stepping back onto the pitch after all those years was incredible. The legs might not move as fast as they used to, but the thrill of kicking a ball, the banter in the squad and the competitive fire never truly left.

Now, having the opportunity to lace up my boots and play against the England Over 70s team is honestly unbelievable. If you had told me back when I was running my coach business that I would be stepping onto the pitch against a national side in my sixties, I would have laughed. It proves one thing to me above all else, you are never too old, and it is never too late to play the game you love.

John Fresco

An RAF childhood, a decent turn of pace on the athletics track, and Fulham in the blood.

Up until I was 16 I moved about with my father, who was in the RAF, so after living at various camps including Germany and Cyprus we settled in Milton Keynes when he demobbed.

Whilst he was stationed at Northolt my father ran a boys football team, under 14s and then under 15s. He rarely picked me though, because of my athletics. I ran for Hillingdon AC and for the borough, and won the inter borough 1500m championship at Crystal Palace in 1973.

I have followed Fulham as long as I can remember, as my dad did before me. The family is originally from Hammersmith, so QPR was never an option. I got my first pair of boots from Ron Springett’s shop in Shepherds Bush.

When we moved to Milton Keynes in 1975 I played for McCorquodales in the North Bucks premier league at 16, as a full back, and for Greenleys on a Sunday when they first started, out on the wing. I turned out for a lot of teams over the years, including New Bradwell St Peters in the South Midlands premiership, where I even picked up a weekly payment. I had a trial for Brentford but, as these stories usually go, I did not quite make the grade, too small and a bit of knee trouble.

I played until I was 40, then kept going in the vets leagues after a meniscus tear and an operation. At 53 I won a seven a side league at Stantonbury, that was my last trophy. I stopped playing about 12 years ago, but now I have retired I thought I would kick a ball around again for the enjoyment and to keep fit.

I have always kept playing because I seemed to hold on to a level of fitness. It is only injury that has ever stopped me, not age. Playing against an England side at any level will be a great experience, and I am looking forward to it.

Allan Malcolm

Seventy one, and a very proud Scot relishing a game against the auld enemy.

I have played football since primary school, when I made the Bantaskin School team at 10. I played at Falkirk High School through the age groups up to under 16, then juvenile football for Camelon Thistle up to under 18. I have always supported Falkirk and still do, from afar these days.

After I graduated in chemistry from Strathclyde I played at a decent level in three different countries. Camelon Juniors back in Scotland, then a few games with Bedworth United reserves when I moved south to Coventry, then Prestatyn Town in North Wales. When work took me to Stockton on Tees I was away a lot, so I temporarily retired at 32.

I came back at 37 when we moved to Banbury, helping a neighbour rescue a reserve team and soon finding myself back in the first team in midfield. Over the years I moved into management, at Easington Sports and Banbury United reserves, and I got to play a senior game alongside my son before I hung the boots up at 43. I stayed in the game as a manager and later chairman at a local club.

I only started kicking a ball in anger again three years ago when I joined Man v Fat in Banbury, mainly to lose weight and get fit. I am glad to say I lost two and a half stone and got my appetite for football back. Around Christmas I joined the Banbury club so I could play with people nearer my own age, though I was holding my own against the guys in their thirties and forties, only a little slower these days.

I am very proud, as a Scot, to be pulling on a shirt against the auld enemy. I had thought football had passed me by at 71, especially international football. But here we are, and I am looking forward to a new challenge again.

John Townley

A Chelsea supporter and a fine marathon runner who found his way back to the game at 66.

I am a Chelsea supporter. I started playing football in my late 20s, mainly five a side. I did play a few seasons in a Sunday league team but always preferred five a side.

I have always enjoyed football, but athletics has really been my main sport, I seem to be better at it. I ran a lot of marathons, with 3.28 my personal best.

I joined MK over 60s football two years ago because I had missed playing, and for the exercise and to keep fit.

At the age of 66, playing against England is going to be such an honour for me. It is going to be a monumental day and I feel very privileged to be a part of it. Special thanks to Ian Groves for his tireless work arranging this.

Frank Kinner

Marked Ray Wilkins as a boy, played for QPR Supporters Club across Europe, and has the three broken legs to show for a full footballing life.

I realised I probably wasn’t going to make it to the top at the tender age of 14, when I played against Ray Wilkins in a school match. I was given the unenviable task of marking him and, without breaking sweat, or seemingly even trying, he proceeded to score a hat trick. That was perhaps my first humbling lesson in just how high the bar was.

I played my first men’s game at 16 and, for the next 25 years, football became a huge part of my life. I played both Saturday and Sunday every weekend, and was fortunate to turn out for some fantastic teams.

The highest level I reached was probably with Martin Baker in the London Commercial League. But one of my most memorable moments came out of the blue. While in Athens supporting my beloved QPR in the UEFA Cup, I was discovered playing football on the beach and invited to join QPR Supporters Club FC.

I spent many happy years playing for them on Sundays. We won numerous trophies in the Surrey Invicta League and enjoyed some unforgettable European tours, in magnificent stadiums against German and Dutch opposition. Those trips had everything I love about football, competition, camaraderie, travel and, above all, friendship. I also captained and managed Chalfont Athletic in the Bucks League.

Over the years I have had countless highlights, but playing at Loftus Road with the Hellraisers, and captaining the winning team last year, will always hold a very special place in my heart. It has given me a new lease of life, and I cannot praise everyone involved highly enough for making this old boy’s footballing dream possible.

Now I feel incredibly privileged, and hugely excited, to play against England in the World Cup warm up. It is something I could never have imagined as that 14 year old trying, and failing spectacularly, to keep Ray Wilkins quiet. I will be giving it everything, while hopefully avoiding adding to my tally of three broken legs from my younger, slightly more robust days. After all, there is still plenty of football left in these old legs.

Robert Wilson

From Southend to Southport and back, a lifelong Spurs and Southend man who worked his way up through the amateur ranks.

I started playing at Bonchurch Park and for my junior school in Southend when I was 6 or 7, then for Leigh Rangers Juniors up to 13. We moved from Southend to Southport and I hated my new school because it only played rugby. I played for Park Rangers and Ainsdale Hesketh Juniors before joining Southport Amateurs, working my way up from the fourth team to the first team in the Lancs Amateur League.

At 18 I went to Trent Poly and played for Sherwood Amateurs in the Midland Amateur Alliance. I had a trial for Ilkeston Town with another player from the team, we were both selected, and I played a couple of first team games and even got paid, before moving back to Essex for my first job after graduation. I played local leagues in Southend and Chelmsford, then rejoined Sherwood Amateurs in Nottingham and helped them win the division title, before playing for Ladybay in the same league.

I turned out for them regularly until we moved to Milton Keynes in 2006. Here I played for a few teams in the veterans league, Hanslope Castlethorpe and most recently Sherington, before joining the Hellraisers. I am really looking forward to playing England. I have supported Spurs all my life, as well as my home town Southend United.

Barrie Hicks

A proper Luton man of 67 who once outscored Kerry Dixon, and who found running football suits him even better than the walking game.

I saw my first Luton game by crawling under the double gates in the Bobbers stand at Kenilworth Road with my mate Gareth when I was about seven. I was enthralled by the noise and the excitement, and my dad started taking me and my sister shortly after. I have had to endure the roller coaster of being a Hatters fan ever since. My great great uncle William Roland Brown was a Luton player for a few years until he moved on to Watford, to our family’s eternal shame, and more recently my granddaughter has played for Luton Town Ladies.

Like most boys of my generation, I started off playing in the street and on the two playing fields at either end of my road. A football was always either under my arm or attached to my feet. I progressed through my school team and the Chiltern youth league into adult Sunday league, and briefly Letchworth Town. I lacked a bit of self confidence in those days which probably held me back, though my claim to fame is playing alongside Kerry Dixon in youth football, and in one game scoring two goals to his one.

I played up to about 40, then packed it in after a bad ear infection affected my balance and I thought my legs had gone. Ten years ago I was persuaded to try walking football for Luton and we won my first tournament at the Etihad, beating Man City in the final. I was hooked, and went on to play for the SE England over 60s regional team, though I never quite made the full England squad.

About six months ago I found out about the over 50s Sunday sessions at MK and I am loving it. I actually find proper veterans football easier than walking football, and it suits my style more. Many of the guys have 10 or 15 years over me but I like to think I hold my own. The banter is good and the games are played in a terrific spirit, and I feel so privileged to still be playing at 67. To anyone thinking of playing again, whatever your level, I say just do it. Age is a great leveller, and it is like starting all over again.

Dorien James

Survived an aortic dissection, came back through walking football to the proper game, and now takes on England as a Welshman. In his own words, none of this should be possible.

I have started playing football twice. The first time was when I was 40. I had played about three games of five a side since school, when I saw a sign on a lamppost looking for players for the village veterans team. I thought that might be fun. I was on the bench for the first game, but persuaded the manager to let me come on when we were 8 nil down on the grounds that things couldn’t get worse. I carried on from there, including charity games at the City Ground and the Etihad, and for 10 years ran the Milton Keynes Veterans League.

Then on New Year’s morning 2016 I felt an odd tearing sensation down the back of my sternum. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it wasn’t right. For a long time Northampton A and E didn’t know what it was either. It took them until the next day to give me a CT scan, at which point they got very excited, took me to Oxford in an ambulance, made me sign a consent form for emergency surgery, and spent the following 12 hours cutting my chest open to repair my aorta. The problem, aortic dissection, is extremely dangerous, often fatal, and I am very pleased to be alive.

I never expected to play football again. It took two months before I could even jog, a recovery that was set back when one of the follow up scans showed I also had cancer, happily not very serious and easily removed. After a couple of years I started walking football, but quickly realised that the proper game was more fun. So, well past age 60, I started my second football career, playing in the Hellraisers. These days, although not the most skilled, I aim to be the hardest working player on the pitch. I also do a couple of fell races and a half marathon each year, and I am captain of the local orienteering club. None of this should be possible.

I am Welsh. I have competed for Wales at over 50s orienteering, I was even interviewed in Welsh during the Snowdon Race television coverage, so I am very much looking forward to the chance to take on England.

Graham Bickerdike

Our goalkeeper, 72 years old, a former merchant seaman and a referee of 30 years standing, and still a formidable opponent to try and score against.

I am 72. I started playing in goal when I was 50 due to my knees being shot. When I was younger I was in the merchant navy and our ship played two games in Japan against the shipyard. We had 41 people to select from as opposed to the shipyard’s 15,000, and we lost both games 2 nil. I have also been refereeing local leagues for 30 years.

Paul Taberner

Brought up on rugby, an MK Dons man these days, and once a promoted American gridiron player with the Milton Keynes Pioneers.

With my father a rugby union fan, and going to a rugby playing school, my first exposure to proper football was when I went to a Northampton Town game in 1970, standing on the duckboards over the cricket pitch at the County Ground. Having moved to MK in 1990 I stopped going to the Cobblers and am now an MK Dons fan.

I didn’t get into playing football until 1985, when a group of us from work started playing five, or six, or seven a side once a week.

In the early 90s I did play football for a team, but with a difference. This was American gridiron football, and as the Milton Keynes Pioneers we got promoted into League One of the NDMA.

The five, or six, or seven a side continued for many years, either with work colleagues or other local groups, until my 63rd birthday, when playing against people in their 20s and 30s got too much.

I then spent 3 or 4 years supporting my son’s team, running the line and the occasional refereeing, until I saw through an internet search that someone was setting up an over 50s group, and joined in fairly near the start. My skills may not be that good, but playing once or twice a week has improved my fitness immensely.

The chance to play against an England team was not one you could turn down, so here I am.

Ian Le Fevre

Came to the game late, found it through George Best, and has barely put his boots away since.

Football held no interest for me until well into my teens. As a country boy living far from any football pitch or team, there was nothing to inspire me in the game. The first match I watched, on my grandparents’ TV, was the 66 World Cup Final and, at the age of 12, I still wasn’t impressed.

It wasn’t until I discovered George Best that I began to see football as something worth watching, or even playing. Soon after this I was picked for my school team, first as a winger then a centre forward, and loved it.

I have pretty much played ever since, apart from a few years when climbing and mountaineering led me astray. For me it has mostly been social football, college football, a couple of half decent clubs and briefly vets.

Joining Hellraisers has been a really positive addition: a great bunch of lads, some very good players and football played in the right spirit. For a couple of hours a week we feel less like old codgers and more like we did 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

The chance of playing against an England XI at this time of life is a brilliant opportunity and one most of us never thought we would have.

Ian Groves

Our captain, whose energy has driven the whole thing. From jumpers for goalposts in 1950s South London to taking on England.

As a young boy growing up in South London in the late 1950s I was passionate about football. There was very little to do with spare time. Most of my friends played football. There was the school team and, away from school, the park, jumpers for goalposts. There was no grassroots football for young boys back then.

We relied on the radio for results. At five o’clock on a Saturday, every result from every game would be reported. My Dad would have the paper out with the list of fixtures to check whether we had won the football pools. We never did.

It was difficult to watch football back then, especially as we had no TV, so we relied on the back pages of the Sunday papers for match reports. Then in 1964, Match of the Day began broadcasting. This was really exciting as I was allowed to stay up late and visit my friend’s house to watch it on TV.

July 1966 was the big one. I actually got to see it coming home, courtesy of my neighbours who let me and my brother watch on their TV. Absolutely unforgettable and, of course, the immortal they think it’s all over.

At the end of that summer I started my secondary school and quickly realised I might have been a big fish in a small pond at primary school, but was now a small fish in a big pond, and struggled to make the school team. Unlike many of my teammates, I have no glory day stories to report. Instead I discovered Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Rolling Stones, and heavy volume 11 rock became my passion.

I never kicked a ball in any serious way until forty years later, in 2008. My son was five years old. The only way to get him into a grassroots team was to create a rising stars team and align it with the established local team. Thus began an eighteen year association with grassroots football. I took both my sons’ teams through to Under 18. I found it extremely rewarding to see five year old toddlers develop into teenagers and finally young adults, not just from a footballing standpoint, but as all round individuals.

And so this is where I got back into football. I enjoyed planning and taking part in training drills and small sided games with the team. I realised what fun I had been missing. My boys encouraged me to find an old men’s football team. Nearly three years ago I joined what was then a small group of Hellraisers. I did not expect it to last, but everyone has been so supportive and welcoming. The group has grown so much that we have put together a team of Over 70s to play against the England Over 70s. I am incredibly excited at the prospect. Win, lose or draw, it will be a fantastic experience and, most importantly, a lot of fun. God willing, I plan to continue playing for as long as I can. Age is just a number.