Injured Adult Men’s Goalkeeper Part 1

The DREADED NEWS. Anger and Denial

For any team captain or coach, the last words you ever want to hear from your goalie is “I am hurt”. I now have an injured goalkeeper. The words you definitely don’t want to hear is that it is level 2 or level 3 tear. These 2 sentences will make any grown man cry. As tears welled up in my eyes, I fought to contain my composure. I truly care about all about my players, but this news is especially devastating.

With utmost empathy I asked how our keeper was doing and if he was in a lot of pain. He showed me his leg and there was a 12″x 9″ black, blue and purple bruise. It was a horrible site and I really felt for him. The emotions were mixed. On one hand our season was starting off strong sitting top of the table, anger welled up that we lost our starting goalie. On the other hand, I was truly concerned about his wellbeing. I wished him a speedy recovery while offering any help the team or myself could provide. After the shock and anger subsided, reality set in. What were we to do short our starting goalie?

We are extremely fortunate to have such a fit and athletic over 45 soccer goalkeeper in good shape and form. Most older competitive goalies I know are too beat up from years of diving and tough challenges. Copious amounts of pre, during and post-game Advil and Ben-gay just don’t help us anymore at this age. Maybe we need to start stocking a team supply of ‘gummies’ :). As one of my great goalie buddies used to say to me, “I can still dive but the getting back up part is the tough part”. Our starting goalie is naturally a defender but fell in love with goaltending much later in life. Much to our benefit and a testament to his longevity.

So, what next?

I hope most of you captains have planned ahead for such a scenario since quality adult goalkeepers really do not grow on trees. They truly are a precious resource. If you have not, start planning today. Unfortunately for DFC United, I was not that foresightful. Albeit I did recruit a couple of ex-teammates who act as solid backup goalies to cover our primary goalkeeper for a game here and there. But not for a long-term injury stint such as our current predicament.

Panic set in with the squad as the reality of our injured goalkeeper set in. The boys are truly all team players and I am proud to call them brothers on and off the pitch. One by one they offered to take a turn in net until our starting goalie recovered and was game ready. This was a great coming together for the team but not a great long-term fix. What we really needed was a full-time backup goalie to fill in. Where do we find one partway thru the season who is not already committed to a team and in game shape. This was no easy task.

The team leadership group got together and decided to ask all the boys to dig deep in their network to find an alternate to our injured goalkeeper. If we only had an app with a directory filled with free agent adult goalkeepers ready to call down for matches? Hmmm…perhaps an adult free agent directory like Subsneeded.com will help us.

Solution. Moving Forward with our Injured Goalkeeper

The call went out to the entire squad to dig deep and reach out to their personal networks to find the team a substitute, call-up adult free agent goalkeeper. I am definitely fortunate to have inherited a group of classy and passionate adult soccer athletes.

Within a few hours, our teammates were able to come up with 2-3 potential goalkeeper options. Most were ex-teammates who were defenders, and some were retired goalkeepers. I had to quickly decide the fee structure for this goalkeeper who would help save our season. We have a couple of players who can play goalkeeper, but no one really wants to play keep full time for the team.

Goalkeepers are hard to find. Older solid goalkeepers are an even rarer commodity. Normally, it would not be fair to waive fees for only specific players, but no team member would complain in this scenario. One of our speedy wingers was able to confirm and commit an ex-goalkeeper teammate. Albeit, he had not played adult footy for over 10 years and was out of shape and extremely rusty. We counted our blessings and were lucky to plug the massive hole in our team within one day. Way to go team DFCU!

With the new temporary goalkeeper confirmed, fees waived, we scheduled him to start our next scheduled game. He had some old goalie jerseys and gloves, but we did outfit him with some new club shorts and socks.

One of my first orders of business this upcoming winter season is to start building up a solid rolodex of callup players and keepers. Moving forward, I will ensure to use an awesome service such as Subsneeded.com listing of available free agent players to keep my team stocked with on demand free agent players.