For 25 years, my weekly game has been about so much more than sport

It’s the middle of summer, which means a new football season. The glory game hardly sleeps these days: the Women’s World Cup has only just concluded and there is the constant spectre of the Saudi power grab on men’s elite football.

- Graham Snowdon

As a fan, I’ll still embrace this hypothetical moment of renewal. The big kick-off for me, however, will come in early September, with the return of the Thursday night football game that, for the past 25 years, I’ve played in almost every week.

I first got involved with it in 1998, invited along by friends in the time-honoured way. Back then I was working at the Independent, and the 9pm kick-off suited me well as I could generally get there after the first edition of the paper had gone to press.

Most of my Thursday evenings since then, amid changes of jobs and circumstance, have been defined by a routine of ferreting around the house for contact lenses, grabbing whatever bits of kit I can find and shoving a towel into a tatty old orange bag. At 8.20pm I’ll squeeze into the back of a car that was patently not designed for four portly middle-aged men.

For one hour every week, on a pitch in central London, between 12 and 18 of us will hoof a ball about with varying degrees of humour, skill and athleticism. Extensive post-match analysis in the pub will follow. Perhaps we’ll segue daringly into current aff airs, possibly with a dash of Premier League chit-chat. But mainly the talk is about the game.