An e-mail from Steve Embleton, lead coach of Global Development at Leyton Orient FC, led to seven members of the Walking Football Club entertaining the Danish team NR. Bjaert Strandhuse IF. Steve’s request was to put on a walking football game as the Danes had only heard of the walking version of the beautiful game but had no experience of playing it.

The Danes had come to London as part of a regular exchange with Leyton Orient and whilst the focus is on young people the lead coaches from the Danish Club wanted to test out walking football as in Denmark playing 5-a-side is still common with the older players but the slower variant is unheard of.

The session started with a quick explanation of walking football from Len Cheston followed by a warm up led by Len and then a walking football exercise led by Trevor Ridley. The weather was wet and drizzly so it was quickly decided to go into game mode. The two groups were combined so the walking footballers and the Danish visitors were mixed together into two teams. To give our visitors a full flavour of the different varieties of walking football the first game was played to the Dutch rules, small goals with no areas and no goalkeepers. Julian Lillington made a quick start rifling home two goals and then demonstrating he had swallowed the Wikipedia entry for famous Danish footballers, by shouting out random names of footballers. With Ridley refereeing there was some friendly debate from the Danes about what constituted running – so no change there then.

The second game was played to the conventional English laws of the game with Paul Taylor and David Norris bravely going into goal. The Danish dads departed to watch the junior game with the Danish Clubs youth players joining with their coaches and the Leyton Orient walking footballers. Again the two groups were split so there were Danes and Brits playing in the same teams. The game quickened up with Jake Zelkowicz and Graham Manicom providing some creative inspiration. Lots of goals followed with the young players observing the walking rules religiously. One young player crossed into the Ministry of Silly Walks with some speed walking and on one occasion shot past a fast walking Ridley.

There was some good discussion at the end of the morning with the Danish lead coach. He was impressed with our session and had quickly realised the benefits of walking football for the older player. He went on to outline that there is no walking football in Denmark and raised the possibility of inviting Leyton Orient Walking Football Club to a local tournament to do some coaching and demonstration work, so watch out for more news.

Thanks to Steve Embleton of Leyton Orient for inviting the Club to take part, to Len Cheston for organising and to the players who turned out on the day to support this ‘hands across the water’ collaboration with our new friends from Denmark.

Leyton Orient squad: Len Cheston, Julian Lillington, Graham Manicom, Dave Norris, Trevor Ridley, Paul Taylor,
Jake Zelkowicz.

Location

Ive Farm, Walnut Road, E10