I'm the reluctant goalkeeper with a budding Maradona

About a year ago, my little lad Wilf suddenly got into football. It was quite an odd thing.

- Steve Canavan

One day he had no interest in it, preferring to spend his existence watching cartoons and having a Hollywood diva-style tantrum every time you bought his morning toast in the wrong-coloured bowl ('DADDY, I WANT THE BLUE BOWL NOT THE RED ONE!'); the next he woke at 9am, asked to play football in the back garden, and has been obsessed ever since.

Part of me is really pleased. As a big sportsman myself (the highlight of my illustrious career came when I won the 1987 Unsworth County Primary School Sportsperson of the Year award - the little silver shield I received in assembly from the headteacher Mr Abbott is in a bin-liner in the attic; well, you can't chuck something as special as that), I always dreamed of having a child who was active and wanted to do things.

However, given just how much he mithers to go outside and kick a ball with him, the other slightly bigger part of me is kind of wishing he was the type of child who just wanted to sit on a settee playing a computer game and eating Monster Munch.