skirtcafe.org

Maybe this is a topic that has been covered before on here. I'm not much of a sports fan, but I have been watching some of the Euro '24 coverage in light of the fact that England has made it further through the competition than might normally be the case.

I was struck by the proliferation of pink and purple footie boots (cleats if you are in North America) on show - along with the odd smattering of yellow, salmon and white. Seems this has been a thing for the past few years. When I was a kid, many of the boys my age wanted to wear all of the gear that their favourite player wore. I'm pretty sure that pink boots would be a bridge too far back then, but hopefully not now!

On a related note, the daughter of one of my cousins posted some pics on Facebook of a school football end of season awards ceremony. Of the 9 boys receiving awards, 3 of them were wearing Alice bands (one of them pink, the other two were black). Apparently, Jack Grealish is largely responsible for this style. As per my previous post, I don't think this is something that kids would have emulated when I was playing footie in the 70's and 80's.

Continuing with the footie theme, when England played Holland in the Euros recently I was running a training course for a large Boston-based financial institution. I managed to get out of the session and into a nearby pub to watch the last 15-minutes of the game. At least one prominent and esteemed member of this forum should be familiar with the location -

My word, that place looks familiar! Almost as if I'd been in it dozens of times...