How Carlisle United's walking football sessions brightened Bob's life

It may feel like a cliché to describe his story as heartwarming, but no other term will do. United's walking football champion emerges from the Neil Sports Centre, strolls with me to the Beehive pub and then explains how this supposedly sedate form of the game has energised his life.

He had already done so, a few days earlier, to the audience at United's community sports trust awards. The gathering had sat silent and rapt as Bob, having walked to the front of Foxy's restaurant to receive his trophy, made his gently moving speech.

Now, over coffee, he explains things again. He discovered walking football, he says, 18 months ago, a time he was feeling alone at home, retired since 2011, his wife Linda having died in 2013 and with a circle of friends "so small it could barely form a circle".

Bob had cared for Linda for many of their 47 years together after she "put a disc out" in her back whilst cleaning the bedroom. An operation failed to cure the problem, which was compounded when it was discovered she had had a curve on her spine since birth.

"She stayed in a lot - which meant I stayed in a lot," Bob says. "I used to say, 'Come on, I'll take you down to town on your wheelchair,' but she worried too much about what people thought."

Linda's immobility meant her lungs did not receive enough exercise and she eventually passed away from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a respiratory condition. "As it turned out, I retired at the right time, because I got two years with her before she died," Bob says.

"After a while, you've got to try and do something. There's no point wasting away."

Bob would, at first, go for walks around his home town of Whitehaven, with his two Shelties. "On a night, you'd see all these people, but you're still on your own," he says. "I've always been a bit of a loner; when I was younger I could walk all day and not bother about seeing anybody. But as you get older your attitudes change.

"Walking became a bit of a chore, and when that happens you start looking for excuses. It's raining. It's too cold. Any excuse. I ended up spending too much time in the house, and there's only so much Jeremy Kyle you can take…"

It was on one of his daily checks of United's website that Bob's curiosity was pricked by an article about walking football, the initiative designed to reintroduce people over 50 to the game, and which had been running at Carlisle since 2014. "I'd seen it on television, with the Barclays advert, all these elderly gentlemen walking sedately, struggling to even kick the ball.

"I thought it was important to do something I thought I would enjoy, otherwise it becomes a chore. Unlike my friends I haven't the patience for fishing or the co-ordination for golf, but I've always had a love of football. Never been any good at it - too one-paced, really - but I thought I would give this a go."

Bob says his first session, after driving from Whitehaven to the Neil Centre, was much more competitive than that stately advert. "I thought I was totally out of my depth," he says. But the way he was welcomed by the other players meant he kept coming back.

"It was, 'Hi Bob,' we'd crack on with the game, and it was as if I'd been there forever," he says. "There's that sort of bond. They make you feel very welcome. It doesn't matter who you are or how good you are. Mind you, there are some really good players there."

As he talks so brightly about this his 72 years seem invisible. He has played regularly since that first session, twice a week. "One of the drawbacks of retirement is that you forget your routine," says Bob, who was a qualified transport manager and worked in warehousing and logistics. "You wake up in the morning and think to yourself, 'What day is it?'

"Now, as soon as I realise it's Tuesday or Friday, I get that little lift. It's something to look forward to. I've got type two diabetes, so exercise is very important, and my doctor tells me I've lost half a stone, believe it or not. I've gone back to walking, too. To say it's a mental thing is maybe the wrong phrase, because people associate mental problems with something else, but it does put you in a better frame of mind."

The walking football sessions attract anything from 16 to 26 players, with each game lasting five minutes at a time, people as old as 75 joining in, and a social scene having developed off the back of it. "The dressing-room banter's probably as good as you'd see in any Football League team," Bob smiles. "It's the encouragement. You can come off thinking you've had an absolute stinker, but it's all, 'Well played, Bob', pats on the back. It really does lift you."

The sessions are run by United's community sports trust, led by the famously upbeat John Halpin. "Those lads are brilliant," Bob says. "Just their attitude towards you. You're plodding away there, and they're applauding you as if you were Pele."

As referees, Halpin and his colleagues must look out for those who stretch the distinction between fast walking and running. "You get your regulars [who do that]," Bob says. "Probably about half a dozen." Do they get pulled up for it? "Oh, aye. To a certain extent."

Bob also enjoys these United sessions because he has been a Carlisle fan for more than 60 years. He still travels to some away games, and also sponsors his namesake in the Blues squad.

"I actually met Hallam a couple of seasons back, when he was here on loan," he says. "We were sitting at the same table at the end-of-season do, Hallam and Alex McQueen. I said, 'Can I buy you a drink, 'cos I've waited I don't know how many years for somebody called Hope to score for Carlisle'. The pair of them had a glass of coke. I think they were out on the town afterwards, though."

Bob sponsored Russell Penn last season, and backed Hope since his permanent return last summer. "As I understand it, the money goes towards the club. It's helping them in whatever little way I can. I've a lot of years to make up for, really."

By this Bob is referring to the years when, through caring for Linda, his visits to Brunton Park could not be too regular. He grew up on Aglionby Street in Carlisle and moved to Whitehaven aged 19, at that point following his father's footsteps as a bingo hall manager. It was there that he met Linda.

"At the bingo hall. I was working and she was playing. In actual fact, she asked me out. I wasn't a ladies' man by any means."

They had four children, with five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren following. "They know I'm there if they need me, and they do what they can for me, but I don't like to put on them," Bob says. "They've all got their own lives to lead, their own problems.

"They were brilliant when my wife died, all of them. When you've lived with someone for 47 years, it's a big miss, big miss…"

Bob's voice fades to a whisper, but then becomes clearer again when he returns to the game he discovered that has given his days purpose since then. It was his attitude to walking football, the way he has embraced it and been embraced, that saw him honoured with United's award. He said he had an "inkling" when people kept asking if he would be attending the ceremony, but explained that his speech was "impromptu".

As he held his trophy and spoke, it was as proud a little moment as the club has seen this season. "To be quite honest," says Bob, leaning in, "I thought there were a lot more deserving people than myself. The thing is, walking football is not about being the best, it's about being the best you can be.

"That's what they encourage down there. If you're looking to get out of the house, I would recommend it, a hundred per cent."