Ooh, and I've scored two goals from in goal. One wind assisted in an 11 aside match, and one when as a frustrated goalie in a 5 a side match, I got annoyed with my team and had a shot from in goal (unusual to be allowed to kick the ball from in goal, but we were in this tournament) and the ball flew like a bullett into the bottom corner.

I was allowed onto pitch for the final and in the last seconds, got the ball in defence, rounded 3 of the players and flicked the ball off the outside of my foot into the bottom corner. This might not seem all that remarkable, but anyone who'd seen me play football would find it amazing, as I am much more in the Carlton Palmer level of skill than Ronaldinho.

I smashed 50 minutes off last year's time in the Northern Rock Cyclone challenge last weekend. I may upload the official photo for the delectation of the otf peloton. Once I've paid for it.

I got in under 5 hours this year. It's a 64 mile hilly ride around Northumberland.

And I've mentioned this often, but our staff team, inc a 54 year old and a late 40-something won the student 5-a-side league in 1999.

Late one evening - aged about 14 - I finished a round of pitch and putt and, as no-one was around, I had a go at a proper par four hole on the adjoining golf course with my eight iron and putter. Got a par four after hitting my third shot to six inches.

Also have hit two (proper) birdies in a row and I play off 25.

Now the bad stuff. School cricket match against local rivals - they need a single off the last ball and, being a rubbish fielder, I fumble at the crucial moment. Thirty years on I can still hear them celebrating and see the looks on the faces of my team.

Character building stuff.

I reached the final of a Cambs U-16 squash competition. Got tonked in it, but seeing as I could never quite break into the top ten of the junior county rankings, making the final was a decent achievement.

I played and won a rally against the then world no.2 squash player. There are some major qualifiers regarding this, but I will magnanimously overlook them.


I like King Mob's comprehensive school sports day story. I have a similar one.
My year had somehow missed every being taught how to throw a Javelin. As anyone who has tried will know, getting the thing to land point down (i.e. legally) requires a certain amount of technique.
Sports day one year, I had agreed to give it a go, as the field events took place during the day so taking part got you out of a lesson. It turned out that one guy in the year was a member of a local athletics club and was district champion. He won the event with a 40+ metre thrown. However the rest of us weren't members of athletics clubs...
I had been drawn to throw last in each round. Come the/my final throw of the competition, the standings were, erm, interesting. 1st ~ 40m, 2nd ~ 15m (plus two fouls), 3rd - no mark, as the other five had recorded three fouls! I, of course, had two fouls. So I did the obvious thing. Walked carefully up to the line, held the Javelin out in front of me, vertically, point down, avoiding my toes, and dropped it. ~0.30m, third place, six points for the house.
For some mad reason the teacher wasn't happy with me (see the '~' in the distance, he refused to measure my mark, growling "we will call it 30cm"). Something about "not in the spirit of the competition". When the school published the results for the parents, I was listed as third in the Javelin but they had 'accidentally forgotten' to print the distance!

That's a great story, Janik.

It certainly is. Mrs Statto liked it, too.