I REVISITED the esoteric world of junior football at the weekend when I was pressed into service as emergency chauffeur for my grandson’s match on the outskirts of Newcastle.

As a father of four footballing sons, I spent much of my 30s and 40s shivering on touchlines everywhere from leafy Edinburgh suburbs to the back streets of Byker watching them play, defeats far outnumbering victories, but they were always keen to try again the next week.

I have seen footballing dads at their worst, with one highly respected Tynedale professional man arranging to meet a pugnacious referee behind the changing rooms for a bout of fisticuffs after one game, and a coach almost exploding with suppressed rage when his side of dazzling superstars started taking it easy against a Tynedale team when leading 23-0 with 10 minutes to go.

“Play properly or you will be off the team next week,” he snarled, which was taking children’s sport a little too seriously for me.

I even played in a few fathers v sons comedy matches, risking heart failure trying to play alongside dads far older but much fitter than me. Someone had the temerity to ask whether I had swallowed a Spacehopper in the dressing room, but I was too exhausted to respond.

But last Sunday’s game – my first touchline visit for several seasons – was a vivid demonstration of the old proverb that the more things alter, the more they stay the same. For despite the fluorescent boots, the numbered shirts and swanky training tops, the basic game had hardly altered since I played myself over half a century ago.

The influence of saturation football coverage on Sky had clearly had its effect on some players, with boys going down as though they had been shot at the merest hint of a tackle, rolling over several times before looking with outraged anguish at the ref.

Some offside decisions were treated with derision and disgust, and goal celebrations appeared like well-choreographed auditions for Strictly Come Dancing.

But for all the play acting and histrionics, the boys were very solicitous when an opponent went down injured, gathering round with words of comfort for the stricken player – or perhaps to investigate with boyish glee the possibility of blood or broken bones.

The ball was also scrupulously returned to the opposition keeper after these interruptions, even when the “injured” player was soon haring up and down the pitch like a man possessed.

None of this would have happened in my day, largely because we never had referees or linesmen, and I don’t recall my school team actually scoring any goals.

The bitterly cold weather resulted in the majority of players wearing tracksuit bottoms under their shorts, along with gloves, a practice which would have been deemed sissy in the extreme in the 1950s.

One boy even wore a woolly hat throughout Sunday’s game, but that was forgivable, as one of my teammates of half a century ago always played in a fawn balaclava – not to keep his head warm, but to hide his particularly prominent ears.

It was interesting to note that given the recent publicity about the potential dangers of heading a football, resulting in a ban on heading in youth games in that soccer hotbed the USA, that there were plenty of headers in this game, including a headed goal by my grandson.

Hardly anyone headed the ball in my day, as the impact of a size five casey on a head where the fontanelle had hardly closed up could have been catastrophic.

On a wet day, a football was about as heavy as a medicine ball, but that didn’t really matter in the unofficial games which took place in the playground after school, when even the fat and wheezy boys were allowed to participate as non-moving defenders which had to be navigated around.

Play went on until it was dark or until someone broke a window, when both teams somehow managed to vanish like smoke in a howling gale before the glass had tinkled to the ground.

I actually scored a goal in one of these games – a phenomenon as rare as currants in our school spotted dick – but only because the elastic snapped in my shorts on my mazy dribble, and opponents were too busy laughing at my attempts to hold up my shorts with one hand while bearing down on goal.