My Football Journey

Hello, I’m Callum Rivett, and this week I’ll be giving you a snippet of my footballing ‘career’. It’s something different for you, and hopefully it’ll give you a chance for you to know me a bit better. If you want to list your favourite moments of your footballing journey, you are more than welcome to do so in the comments below! (And if you’re a scout for any football club, I’m more than welcome to receive an offer…) 

I started playing competitive football when I was 5, playing a year up for Hemsby Hornets, as a right back, purely because there wasn't a team in my age group yet. I played a few years there, then a team formed that was my age group so I went there and continued as a right back. We were constantly near the bottom of Division One (the top league of a three tiered system) but did win the Shield (the Carling Cup of the Norfolk and Suffolk Youth League) once, then got relegated. 

They folded and our manager went in 2008 - and took most of our players, including myself - to Caister Roma who had just been promoted to Division One. In my first year there we finished 2nd in the league. I was still right back, then I went to right midfield and often central midfield. I preferred playing on the wing. The second year was terrible for me: the manager didn't rotate - myself and two others found ourselves on the bench every single week. We finished 5th that year.

In the next preseason I scored a really good goal against a team in the year above: I got the ball inside my own half, flicked it up to our striker in the centre circle, he headed it back to me and I hit it on the half-volley from inside the centre circle and lobbed the keeper. But once again I was constantly on the bench, and was getting annoyed. I frequently scored and assisted from the midfield. That year (2009-10) was my last year at Caister, as they folded.

I joined a Division Two (the leagues had been compressed, so now there was only two divisions) side where all my mates played but finished near the bottom of the league a lot of the time. This was my first ever year upfront, and in my first game against one of the best teams in the league I scored a hat-trick. I went on to score 31 goals in 21 games, which is ok. We finished 9th out of 12.

Then last year we got a load of new, good players who were our mates, and we really improved. I scored 36 goals in 22 games then, we finished 3rd, just outside the promotion places. We got to the semi-finals of the Shield, but got knocked out by a poor refereeing decisions - it was 1-1 away to a Division One side, and in the last few minutes one of their players dived in our box and somehow the ref thought it was a penalty. They scored it, and we lost 2-1.

But we always struggled getting a full team each week despite having fourteen players signed on. The deadline for getting a team for this coming season is today [Saturday 8th], and currently only nine players have signed on, so it's looking doubtful we'll have a team.

On a positive note, I've had two teams say that they'll have me, but one's an adult team and I'm not 16 until the end of January. No news on Ormesby having a team yet though. Doubt it.

Follow Callum on twitter: @CJRivett12. You can find more of Callum's work here.