Groin injuries (on the whole) are funny...
...mine was not.

And not just because it happened to me.

It was 1988 - Maggie Thatcher was in No. 10, Ronnie Reagan was in the White House and I was in St James' Hostpital, Leeds.



The story begins...

I was a young lad of five whole years and a few months of age, playing on the fields of St Nicholas' School as were hundreds of other kids - so far so normal...

Then some older kids started climbing the football goalposts, clambering atop the crossbar and jumping the eightish feet to the ground.

I saw this and thought "Hey, that looks cool. I can do that too!" (And you may now be thinking "How is this leading to a gooly-region injury? Surely he didn't land on his nuts!" Read on...)

So, I climbed up the goalpost - I was always a good tree-climber as a kid...

And then I balanced myself, standing precariously on the crossbar. And then I looked down... And thought (the innocent five-year-old version of) "Well, FUCK this! If I jump, I'll hurt myself".

So, there I am - a five-year-old nipper stood on top of a footy crossbar, needing to get down but too sissy jump. So I decided to go back the way I came - down the post.

Now, the thing about football goals is that when they are in full use the have nets attached to them to stop the ball, 'k? These posts were not in full use at this time. But the nets need to be attached somehow when they are. For this purpose hooks are used, sticking out of the back. Metal posts, metal hooks.

I slid down the back of the post like a fireman's pole. When you do this your meat-and-two-veg are pressed up against said pole. And my particular pole had metal hooks.

One of the lower hooks ripped into my hairless prepubescent scrotum with all the force of my young weight. I was left screaming in agony, in gushes of blood, hanging by my bollocks for a very long time...

The aftermath? I got eight stitches on my nutsack (and a free, unnecessary circumcision I've never quite forgiven my 'rents for agreeing to), a large L-shaped scar on my scrotum which only faded at age 21 or so, a long stay off school and a story I tell usually only people when I'm drunk.
(Whiskeyklone, Fri 14 Jul 2006, 18:35, Reply)