THIS column was initially to be about DRS, cricket’s decision review system, because if technology can’t get it right as has been painfully shown during the Ashes series, then why not just persist with human fallibility?

However, the column is to transfer to another DRS – days of receding as a substitute.

Like the aforementioned fallibility, age and its withering properties affect us all. So, after almost four decades of playing organised football any purchase of new boots or multi-surface trainers would now be a waste of money.

It’s not as if new boots are never coveted. Recalling the yielding crease and leather smell of adidas Penarol, Puma King and a mint green-striped pair from Italian manufacturers Diadora, they were always welcome, especially that first trying on and walking around the house in them much to the disapproval of parents and, later, the wife.

Now a pair of raggedy rubber-studs clump around the sports-bag, but with even a substitute’s slot inexorably slipping away, to invest in a new pair would be wallet folly.

And even more so as I’m now closer to 60 than 55 and among some team-mates who are less than half my age.

You know you are not quicker, leaner or fitter than most of the rest of the team. But that does not mean you cannot compete any more. And there’s the Dubbin rub.

For all the years I’ve played in works teams, college sides, Sunday League outfits, indoor leagues, and outdoor leagues, actually playing remains... it – the soul of the sole, the meat in the challenge, the besting of so-called superior opposition.

When you’re no longer a regular there’s the hope you might get picked as a sub.

If you do, a pre-match prayer will be offered up hoping it’ll be one of your better days. If not, then at least you pray you might not balls it up.

When you do play, what a release-rush.

Employers might be a ’mare, money might be tighter than a crab’s posterior, the car might be playing up, and the fence might need creosoting again, but for half an hour or so – 90 minutes if still lucky enough to be playing 11-a-side – nothing else matters but the team and toppling rivals.

Timing a tackle sweetly, blocking a net-bound shot, heading the ball clear with the sort of impact that Floyd Mayweather would be proud of, bisecting an opposition defence with a through pass, perhaps even scoring – admittedly not a forté round these here parts – all lift the heart like a roller-coaster ride.

Sporting-wise there’s nothing to match. An ace serve in tennis, a birdie at golf – I’ve only ever had the one – getting three arrows to stick amid the numbers on a dart-board, none compare to any of those fleeting footy highs.

Besides those uplifting individual moments, there is also the incomparable feeling you get from your team gelling to put the opposition to the sword.

To me that’s as much the attraction of the game as myself playing well.

It may sound facile and it definitely does not sound ultra-cool, but for me there is a socialism about football. The fact the team thrives only if the majority of its component parts support and play for each other.

However, there is a curious aspect about the team dynamic as encountered over almost four decades. Alongside the cliché about there being no ‘I’ in team, there is always a ‘me’ – usually plenty of them.

There are those players, the better ones, guaranteed to play because of their talent and what they bring.

But there are also those better players who can perform like a bag of dung but believe they have a divine right to play week in, week out.

Then there are those so fearful their place will be seized they forever stress how good they are, how brave, how full of energy, how “such and such was at fault over this and that and don’t forget the eighth goal when I was left ~ covering three players on my own and me with a fractured eyelash and rickets and three pairs of multi-coloured boots to strut in”.

Then there are those simply just grateful to be part of a team, glad simply still to be playing.

But for all the disparity the team can still prevail, can still thrive, can still prosper and that’s the beauty of the game.

Even despite several comebacks – absences prompted by injury – I still don’t want to give up. But ever more I feel ‘they think it’s all over’.

It may well be that a kick-about in the garage with the two kittens – Lola’s got a mean left paw and Layla’s a demon in the tackle – is drawing nigh.