Local football

I grew up playing football on the streets of Lagos. At first, you have to watch others play, then you get the chance to replace someone who was either injured, tired or called by his parent. Soon you gradually gain ground with other players based on your performance.

We don't need boots to play then. We play bare footed with goal posts we do call "monkey post". Usually, we use two big stones or tyres to make the goal posts. We use legs to measure it then. We can use 3-4 feets if we are playing with a last defender and up to 6feets if playing with a goal keeper. Who needs a referree? We don't make use of referees or line man unlike the standard footballers does. We often leave ourselves to the conscience and based on what happens on the field. We don't play with the standard leader ball. We do use plastic ball at first, then we evolved to using rubber balls which we know as " wembly" balls and then we use "earth ball". It is like spaces are specially created for us to play then. It is either someone's big backyard or in front of an uncompleted building or a primary school playing ground and other special places we do use as our field for football. If close to a house or car, we do play carefully so as not to break the car's windscreen or a glass window.

Generally then, we prefer to play football than to eat. We can play from morning till evening and usually our parents beat us for playing football especially during academic period. We do however have more freedom to play during holidays.

The girls and small children usually gather round to hail and support loved ones. There are certain rules guiding the street football. Whoever owns the ball must play. There are usually two captains who sometimes would volunteer to play as goal keepers or last defender. Two factors usually decides the number of players on each team

1) the size of the field and

2) the number of players available

Let me explain this. If the usual number of players that should play on a field is 4 players, and only 6 players are available to play, they would compromise and play with three on each team. Usually, they'll add one more once others are around to play to balance the size of the field with the number of players.

The possibility of playing in sets makes it fun. If there are more than enough players, we usually end of choosing sets. A goal is usually enough to defeat the opponent which will leave for another set to come in. It was all fun and filled with passion because you will not want your team out of the field easily.

Competitions do come our way sometimes. It could be inter street competition. We often play such as home and away. Home means we play at our own usual street field and away is when we go to our opponent's usual field to play. It is fun filled as we want to hold the bragging right against our neighbour.

The tension grows bigger when betting was introduced into our game. Personally, I do not like betting in the game as it makes the game more dangerous. Number of injuries sustained during matches increases because of betting and we begin to play with the mind of winning at all cost. However, it brings out the best in some and makes the forward players to be more ruthless at scoring goals and converting chances.

Most adults today who grew in an African environment will most likely have a story to tell of their local football experience. It was big fun in those days.