Remembering on The Meadows

The Meadows footballers gathered today to remember one of our own who sadly died way too young last October. As well as a number of the old regulars there were also a few people from I's work at the Parliament and members of his family. A few years on and a fair sprinkling of youngsters brought the average age down significantly as we assembled teams of eight-a-side. After the traditional numbering to pick the teams we had a minute's applause as we remembered I. Tireless running on the pitch - he always seemed to be there, available for a short pass if he was on your team, blocking your way to goal if he was playing against you. And such a lovely guy. We haven't played on The Meadows for a number of years and I probably only saw him once in a while when our paths crossed at Meadowbank - me getting ready for football, him getting changed for badminton. Always a friendly word as we caught up with what we were doing. The game had all the elements of a Meadows game - shouts of 'play on' as the ball stretched the boundaries of the pitch, 'too hard' as goals were chalked off and of course, no counting of the score. It was always the litmus test for would-be players who came to ask if they could join us when we played back in the day. "We don't count the score." If they couldn't handle that then they were probably too serious for us and would be better looking for another game. Over the years we played with people of all nationalities, even the assistant coach from Bayern Munich, out for a Sunday morning jog from his hotel on Lothian Road having come to Edinburgh to watch Hearts ahead of a European tie. Looking that up it must have been early 1989 and probably not long after Meadows football started thirty years ago. Think that was probably before I started playing with us, although he was one of the youngsters when he started - two young Jambos as I recall.
We posed for a group photo afterwards, but obviously I was in it rather than taking it, so instead I took this rather random shot of the old regulars milling around.I managed to catch all six, left to right G, N, B, J, (G's son), D, (D&R's son), two of the 'others' that played today and R. Still seems odd to be playing Meadows football and I not to be on that list.
Afterwards had a spot of lunch with some of the crew and then headed for home as a procession of some sort seemed to be gathering on The Meadows to remember something else.