The Bean Counter has a spring in his step and a smile in his heart. He’s dusted off his trusty Acme Thunderer, dug out his boots, and aired out the gear bag. That can only mean one thing: football season has arrived!

The Homestead has a long history of footballing; all Homesteaders have played at one time or other with varying degrees of success.

The Farmer, possibly the only child to insist on emulating his hero, David Seaman, in both playing style AND hair style

Even after The Bean Counter’s knees made it very clear his playing days were over, he found a way of keeping his eye on the ball. Not discouraged for a moment by the arduous task of coaching The Milk Maid’s team in the dark ages before the patter of tiny feet, he enthusiastically guided The Farmer’s team, The Mighty Otonga Orcas, to multiple successes. As part of the process he began gather a plethora of coaching qualifications, was shoulder tapped to take on some junior provincial representative teams, and there was even a time we, as a family, took a punt at him making this his career – but that’s a story for another day.

Half Time Team Talk; no messing around!

Today’s story centres on a return to the field for The Bean Counter after a five plus year break, a break that coincided with The Farmer hanging up his boots in favour of paid employment.

When Farm Girl voiced her desire to play The Beautiful Game we were a little worried her visual impairment would make this impossible. Her peripheral vision is 50 degrees,  she needs to be six metres away from things most people can see from 36 metres; how could this end in anything but tears? But then she took part in a football workshop run by the Halberg Disability Trust and Mainland Football and guess what? It turned out that just by living among football fanatics she had an innate understanding of the game. Get this girl into a team immediately, we were directed. The Bean Counter didn’t need any further encouragement and on Saturday Farm Girl took the pitch for her first game, sporting the black and white of the Coastal Spirit Titans.

In the ninth grade, that of the Titans, scores are not kept in the interests of developing a deeper understanding of the rules and good playing practice (psst: they won 9-2); the Titans already have a strong coaching team and we’re not ones to mess with success but along with his coaching qualifications, The Bean Counter also received the official refereeing nod – a fact that caused a collective beaming smile for coaches and side line alike.

Half Time Team Talk; 2016

It was impossible to determine who was the most excited to be taking the field on Saturday morning and both are counting the days until they don their boots again; this time against Parklands.

Go Titans!