ABSTRACT

This chapter locates the role of football for older players including how and why they played and the role of the football in their wider lives. It looks at the men’s lives away from the pitch and focuses on the experiences of being the mobile middle class in an area where most were working class with few opportunities for social mobility. The chapter discusses the football tactics of the older, middle-class team of players. It follows the men away from the field to look at the bar in which they all drank, and analyses the role of the rounds system of buying drinks. The rounds demarcated lines of inclusion and exclusion from the group of middle-class men and acted as an agonistic egalitarian gesture which aimed towards equality within the group predicated on displays of wealth. Finally, the chapter looks at a communal meal of cow cod stew (bull penis stew) which was supposed to enhance men’s sexual vitality. .