Alive and kicking: Physicality,pleasure and pain in walking football

Abstract

Older people's participation in sport, and particularly in ‘adapted’ sporting activities, is rarely subject to sociological attention. In this article, I draw upon 65 interviews with older people playing walking football, an adapted version of running football (or soccer) widely endorsed as a safe, sociable, and inclusive physical activity in later life. Informed by a nascent research base demonstrating how older people can use sport to reclaim the corporeal body outside a conventional ageist lens of deficit and decline, I explore three main ways in which older people engage with, and understand, their bodies through walking football. First, players describe the physical benefits of participation in walking football and how it makes intense demands of their bodies. Second, they articulate the visceral pleasures of playing football and how their bodies move in unanticipated, but lively and pleasurable, ways. Third, walking footballers claim that, whilst pain and injuries can limit participation and adaptations are made to include all players, bodily discomfort is a normalised and valorised dimension of walking football. I conclude by identifying a need to continue researching sport in later life as well as how embodiment and corporeality figure in such experiences.

Keywords

Ageing bodies embodiment football older people

Introduction

Most sociological research on sport participation is conducted with young people and middle-aged adults; ‘within sport circles, the ageing body is often ignored’ (Allain, 2022: 13). Indeed, research on older people's participation in sport largely sits outside of sociology. When studies are carried out with this population, they are frequently framed by the general sentiments of active (or positive/successful) ageing (Rowe and Kahn, 1997). Sport is represented as a way for older people to resist medicalised narratives of ageing that is defined by illness, decline, and management and care by others (Dionigi, 2006; Dionigi et al., 2013; Phoenix and Orr, 2014; Phoenix and Smith, 2011; Tulle, 2008; Wheaton, 2019). Whilst bodily ageing is articulated as ‘a break with our youthful past’ that is ‘detrimental to our sense of self’ (Tulle, 2008: 4), older people can engage in sports to disrupt ‘the tyranny of youthful bodies’ (Nettleton, 2013: 200). So, how do older people engage with, and understand, their bodies through sports participation, in ways that can reclaim the corporeal body outside a lens of deficit and decline?

In this article, I draw upon 65 interviews with older people playing walking football, a variation of running football (or soccer) targeted at people, particularly men, aged 50 and above. Walking football is advertised as an adapted/modified sport that provides a safe, sociable, and inclusive physical activity for older people. The term adapted is conventionally reserved for competitive or recreational activities that are modified for disabled people via rule changes and specialised equipment. In the case of walking football, whilst walking footballers might have a disability, the sport itself is adapted for all, namely, to increase accessibility and player safety for every participant whilst trying to sustain a level playing field. Rules vary depending on the respective club and/or league, but two well-established stipulations are that players must walk (not run) and that excessive physical contact is prohibited. Walking football matches are played in recreational and competitive forms, with teams comprised of six players each (although this can vary) and divided according to age (e.g., ‘over-60s’) and, on occasion, gender.

There is some empirical evidence of the physiological and psychological benefits of walking football. However, as stated in Goodison et al.'s (2025) scoping review, data is limited in scale and substance. This research is also rarely in a sociological register, with the focus instead on physical improvements and psychosocial gains (for exceptions, see: Loadman, 2019; Sivaramakrishnan et al., 2023; Thomas, 2024, 2025a, 2025b; Thomas and Thurnell-Read, 2024). Whilst walking football continues to expand and grow in global popularity (Goodison et al., 2025), it – along with other adapted sports, particularly for older people – has received little sociological attention. This article confronts this gap by reporting on the experiences of older walking footballers in the UK.

I explore three primary ways in which older people talk about their bodies in relation to their participation in walking football. First, players describe the physical benefits of participation and how it makes intense demands of their bodies. Second, they articulate the visceral pleasures of playing walking football and how their bodies move in unanticipated, but lively and pleasurable, ways. They demonstrate a bodily prowess that was cultivated in their youth, whilst simultaneously describing the difficulties of establishing a mastery over a body that wants to run but must walk. Third, walking footballers suggest that, whilst pain and injuries can limit participation and adaptations are made to include all players, bodily discomfort is a normalised and valorised dimension of walking football.

This article recovers older people's bodies outside a lens of debility, that is, as impaired and/or as demanding being cared for by others (Martin and Twigg, 2018). Ageing necessitates an engagement with the materiality and corporeality of bodies, including the ways in which older people reflect positively on their bodies outside ‘the external mediation of ills, pills, procedures and prostheses’ (Gilleard, 2022: 884). By describing ‘the embodied and sensory dimensions’ of sport in later-life (Hookway et al., 2024: 503), older people emplace their bodies in positive ways; ‘if the body is something that people do then it is in the doings of people – not their flesh – that the body is embodied; an active process by which the body is literally real(ised) and made meaningful’ (Waskul and Vannini, 2006: 7). Bodies are, in turn, a core component of how older people make sense of the world and how their lives continue to be experienced through their bodies – and in affirmative ways (Richardson and Locks, 2014). In what follows, I provide an overview of the literature on the intersection of sport, ageing, and bodies.

Sport, ageing, and bodies

As noted above, there is a growing scholarship on older people's participation in sport. This research primarily valorises sport as an avenue for successful ageing, namely, for rejecting medicalised narratives of decline (see: Thomas, 2025b). For example, in a study with veteran runners, Emmanuelle Tulle (2008: 159) claims sport offers a site through which older people not only gain physical competence and symbolic capital, but where ‘the relationship to bodily agency is re-articulated’ and a dominant discourse of ageing (as signifying decline) can be toppled. Similarly, Rylee Dionigi's (2006) study with Masters athletes suggests they dismantle ‘the dominant “declining body” narrative of ageing’ by redefining it ‘in terms of physical competency, resilience, social engagement and mental stimulation … older bodies can be competitive and athletic’ (Dionigi et al., 2013: 385).

Nonetheless, such analyses also recognise how a celebration, even glorification, of the agentic and gratifying qualities of sport can frame ageing as a problem to remedy which potentially energises neoliberal conceptions of good and bad ageing (Hookway et al., 2024). Analyses typically, and problematically, frame older people's leisure as maintaining neoliberal notions of good ageing, which valorise physical activity as a vehicle for improving population health (Dionigi and Son, 2017). A moralisation of physical activity, in which fitness and exercise signify moral status (Gibson, 2025), can also be reproduced by older people themselves (Lenneis and Pfister, 2017; Wheaton, 2017; Wiersma and Chesser, 2011). According to Gard et al. (2017), for example, participation in sport and/or physical activity in later life is viewed as rational and expected (moral) conduct. This frames older people's non-participation in sports as immoral and meriting explanation, which neglects the structural barriers and costs of leisure participation (Hookway et al., 2024; Thomas, 2024).

Likewise, Phoenix and Smith (2011: 629) argue that the pursuit of a ‘fit’ body in later-life ‘has become both the normal and the normative’. Older bodybuilders in their research distanced their bodies – as ‘looking good’ – from others who were derided for not aligning with dominant discourses of being fit (2011: 632). Moreover, they argue that routinised physical activity offers an avenue for embodied pleasure – or what Phoenix and Orr (2014: 98) call ‘the pleasure of habitual action’: ‘at times of social and physical change … the disciplined body responds by attempting to regain a sense of predictability and control through the implementation of strict bodily regimes’. Physical activity, thus, provides ‘the possibilities of pleasures and freedom to be realized through the [older] body’ (2014: 100).

Yet, telling a ‘counter-story’ of ageing through the body, and involvement in sport and physical activity, is fragile territory as a person's ‘corporeality can place limits on what can be resisted and how’ (Pheonix and Orr, 2014; Pheonix and Smith, 2011: 636). Indeed, other research identifies how sport/physical activity can pose threats to older bodies, where leisure reproduces undesirable norms of ageing (Wiersma and Chesser, 2011). Older people are subsequently seldom perceived as participating in, or as being interested in participation in, elite and/or physically demanding sports (Kristensen et al., 2025) and, instead, are expected to participate in sedentary leisure pursuits such as, but not limited to, lawn bowls, gardening, and bingo (Dionigi, 2006). For Dionigi (2006: 182), this is reflective of a historical context where ‘strenuous activities and overexertion were thought to be life threatening or too demanding for the ageing body, and sports were perceived as inappropriate or not enjoyable for older people’.

Sociological research on the intersection of ageing, bodies, and sports, nonetheless, remains in its infancy. Despite ageing being conceptualised through the body (Minello and Nixon, 2017), the role of leisure, including sport, on the experience of ageing is regularly overlooked (Dionigi and Son, 2017). This is also true of ‘adapted sport’. The changing health status for older people means that sports in later-life can be modified, thereby demonstrating an awareness of ageing bodies and the importance placed on remaining physically active (Liechty et al., 2014). Adaptive sports are activities modified via rule changes and specialised equipment to allow for the participation of people with certain access needs, and particularly disabled people who have previously been excluded from sport and physical activity (Héas, 2015). Modifications are made on the basis that people (such as older people in the context of my project) are assumed to be unable to participate in an activity as ordinarily intended (such as running football). Adaptive sports are heralded as one way to rectify the acknowledgement that sport is not always a tool for including and integrating people (Dowling, 2024). Research has asserted that adaptive sports have benefits, such as building confidence, transforming attitudes, and providing opportunities for physical activity and cultivating friendships (Añorve et al., 2026; Cottingham et al., 2023). Yet, despite their prevalence, adapted activities do not attract substantive attention in the sociology of sport. This article makes such an intervention. In what follows, I provide an overview of my research with older people playing walking football.

Methodology

This article draws upon semi-structured interviews, undertaken over 4 months in 2022, with 65 people playing walking football in the UK. Participants were recruited using social media. The eligibility criteria were broad; people could volunteer to take part if they played walking football irrespective of their age and gender (despite walking football initiatives largely being directed towards older men). Altogether, 53 men and 12 women participated in interviews; 14 were aged under 60, 36 were agreed 60–69, and 15 were aged 70 or above. Whilst the 14 people under the age of 60 may not be classified as older people, their experiences are important for revealing the centrality of the body as people age. Players were mixed relating to their social backgrounds, educational history, and employment status, and there was a broad spectrum of playing history with respect to participation in running football (i.e., from non-participation through to playing football at a professional level).

Interviews were conducted online via Zoom with video enabled. Interviewing in online spaces can make it difficult to establish rapport, read bodily cues, and ensure accessibility – as well as potentially excluding people who are not digitally engaged. However, the approach proved fruitful and ensured people from around the UK could participate in a way that was implausible if interviews were conducted in-person. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed by the author and ranged from 30-min to 1-h in length. Participants were invited to discuss, among other matters, reasons for their initial involvement in walking football, its major benefits and drawbacks, and relationships with other players. All participants provided written consent, which was verified verbally at the beginning of each interview. They were told that they could stop the interview at any time and refuse any questions, as well as withdraw from the study altogether without explanation. No participants took up such offers; participants were, in fact, largely excited and enthusiastic when describing their participation in walking football. Most played at least once a week, with a small number playing 3–4 times a week. The project received ethical approval from the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee. Pseudonyms are provided in this article.

I analysed data with reference to the principles and sensibilities of ‘abductive analysis’ (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). This meant putting data into dialogue with theoretical and empirical contributions. It involved identifying patterns in the dataset – 65 interview transcripts – to create a range of common themes including, but not limited to, ageing, social relationships, health, gender, and practices of inclusion and exclusion. As analysis continued throughout the data collection period, I attempted to spot patterns and inconsistencies in data and formulated several prevalent ‘themes’, or ‘ideas’, that framed analysis. This also helped to guide questions and prompts for later interviews. Conclusions drawn from the dataset were then substantiated with reference to scholarship on older people's participation in sport/physical activities/leisure together with sociological theory and research on the themes mentioned above. In this article, whilst touching on several themes from the dataset, I mostly discuss how older people engage with and understand their bodies through walking football.

‘I like being fit’: Physicality and older bodies

Walking football was championed by participants for providing them with an outlet to be physically active in later life. This was one of the major initial draws for playing, namely, to ‘keep the body as trim as I could’ (Jeremy, 72):

It encourages the older generation … to get out and participate, mix, and get your body in a state whereby you're a lot physically and psychologically healthier. I always use the term we've put the black suit on too many times [to attend funerals] because we know people that have retired and then a couple of years later, unfortunately, they're no longer with us. (Theodore, 68)

For Theodore, walking football is ‘a healthy option compared to sitting on the settee, watching some mindboggling programme on the television … If I didn't do it, I'd be stuck in that chair over there and pottering around the garden’. The onset of retirement, for several participants, risked ‘slipping into just sitting in front of a TV all day’ and, as such, there was a desire to ‘get fit’ and ‘to keep my brain and body active’ (Zachary, 62). Here, age signifies a motivator, rather than a barrier, for participation (Minello and Nixon, 2017). As Theodore suggests, participation in walking football can also be informed by the death of family and friends. Larry (67) claimed:

The one benefit that I get is fitness. I think that it's going to help prolong my life. That's the way I look at it. In recent years, I've lost a couple of mates that I was at school with. That shocked me… I’ve got four grandsons and a granddaughter. So, I think I’m going to try and do what I can do to lose weight, keep more weight down and just keep myself fit, and try and stay in this world for as long as I can and enjoy my retirement.

Several participants, like Larry, felt a need to lose weight. Similarly, Finn (65) joined his local football team – who he described as his ‘saviour’ – since he was ‘really overweight, and I got thinking, you look in the mirror and you don't see what you see, do you?’. Wayne (51) said he had ‘put a bit of beef on in the middle’, referring to what he saw as an increase in his stomach size. Whilst he was previously ‘active’ and listed his participation in several sports, this became more difficult as he aged. Wayne's participation in walking football offers ‘fitness’ and a vehicle for ‘raising my heart rate enjoying doing something I've always liked doing’. Mary (48) was one of the younger participants, but similarly claimed ‘I haven't invested in myself physically for a very long time’:

As I get older, I understand that as a woman, in terms of health, you can't burn off the fat, your muscles atrophy and all that jazz. And there's no way I'm going to be a lazy old fart because I hit 60 and moan about it … It's just not in my nature. I like being fit. I like feeling physically strong and I've always identified with that.

Remaining physically active was seen as crucial as it would not always be possible. For Jeremy (72), playing sport allowed him to ‘make the best of yourself … why not try and get the best mileage out of the machine with the time that you've got left?’ Likewise, Alfie (66) felt he needed to ‘cease the day and do what you can for as long as you can’. Moreover, ‘keeping fit’ by playing walking football, Alfie says, ‘makes me more able to do my babysitting duties better because you have to be pretty fit to keep up with them’. It seemed that good health and fit bodies were a source of pride for many participants, such as sharing their health metrics during their interviews; ‘I’ve got some health metrics, my resting heart rate was in the seventies on my Fitbit when I was working and I’m down to 57 now’ (Jeremy, 72). Players were proud both of their health/bodily measurements and their ‘continued affinity with sporting culture’ (Thomas and Thurnell-Reas, 2024: 199).

Another way that participants discussed their bodies was by making comparisons to (sedentary) others:

I'm not deriding the youth of today, but you see a lot of people walking around or waddling around and they're overweight. They're not as fit as us. We've got guys who are 65, 70, that could run rings around them because we're so much fitter than the younger generation in their twenties, thirties and forties. So, it's a feeling of, wow, I'm looking after my physical health and my mental health. (Evan, 65)

Other participants made similar comparisons, particularly to their fathers and/or grandfathers; ‘you never saw anybody's Dad doing anything, any sports or anything like that with a pair of shorts and trainers on running around the streets, did you?’ (William, 72). This comparison potentially solidifies a distinction between good and bad (ageing) bodies (Gard et al., 2017). There were instances in which players who were labelled as overweight and/or unfit were told to join a club when they had lost weight and/or gained fitness; ‘you have to have a modicum of health to play it’ (Theodore, 68). There is also a moral assessment, even derision, of older people who do not participate in physical activities (Gard et al., 2017; Wheaton, 2017). Exercise and physical activity are situated in a ‘moral economy’, demonstrating ‘to yourself and others your moral standing’ (Gibson, 2025: 87). Related to this is an ostensibly fat-phobic understanding of their and others’ bodies – of, as Evan asserts, ‘overweight’ people ‘waddling around’ who are ‘not as fit as us’.

Nonetheless, I argue that such comparisons point to the centrality of the body in older people's stories about participation in walking football. This also became clear when participants stated how walking football was physically demanding. It is ‘hard’ and ‘skilful’ (Larry, 67), and ‘a lot more intense than I actually thought it was going to be’ (Patrick, 51):

I've had people saying, ‘what are you doing playing walking football?’ And I said, ‘you should come along and try it before you sort of start judging it’, because they think it's a stroll in the park. It's not until they play that they realise how much effort you need to put in … You can pick up a lot more injuries because trying to walk properly on the pitch is so much more difficult than normal walking. (Brenda, 61)

The vigorousness of walking football makes considerable physical demands of players; ‘I get worn out quickly, I'm sort of puffing and panting, but it is so difficult to walk very quickly’ (Timothy, 71). This was clear during competitions (‘after two days, not one of us could walk straight [laughs] … we’d all tested ourselves to exhaustion’ (Jason, 74)) and initial training sessions; ‘the first [training] session absolutely wrecked me physically [laughs], I was shocked by how demanding it was’ (Wayne, 51). Participants lamented assumptions that ‘I'm walking the dog kind of speed, whereas I've got a Fitbit and my heart rate when playing walking football is probably only 10–15 beats slower than when I'm doing a 5K run’ (Liz Davies, 54). Some players admitted to holding these presumptions themselves prior to playing walking football:

I went down there with the typical attitude that this is going to be rubbish … it's not going to keep me fit and I came away from the first session blown away by, wow, I've just been sweating my balls off for the last hour [laughs]. (Lawrence, 58)

Players were clearly invested in maximising their physical health, and walking football offers them a mechanism to do so. Rather than being sick, or potentially sick, bodies in need of management and care, older people expressed the pleasures of participation (Pheonix and Orr, 2014), not least because of a growing appreciation of their physical capacities (Liechty et al., 2014). Walking football, as an adapted sport, represents a way for older people to recognise, accept, and celebrate ‘the realities of their bodies and age-related changes’ (Allain, 2022: 14).

‘Where the hell did that come from?!’: The visceral pleasures of sport

Players also foregrounded their bodies when describing their feelings about walking football. Many described football as being ‘in their blood’ whilst highlighting its affective pleasures; ‘it just felt great to be kicking a ball again’ (Eric, 59). Participants spoke of football making them ‘feel alive again’ (Jack 67), a kind of ‘rejuvenation’ (Jeremy, 72):

The feeling is excitement of scoring a goal. You feel elated. And then when you come home and you’re sweaty and you shower, those endorphins kick in … The first thing I did [when playing for the first time] was pull a muscle. It's a lot faster than you think. But I loved it. Kicking a ball again was just like “yes” [pumps fist]. Making a goal, scoring a goal, stopping a goal, all those feelings came flooding back … It's rekindling feelings from the past I never thought I'd feel again. (Margaret, 60)

Older people described playing walking football as an ‘adrenaline rush’ (Evan, 65). Some used words, such as ‘buzz’, to describe ‘little moments where you pass that ball across or that person who just whacks it in the goal’ (Susan, 67):

I love it because if I get a good tackle in, especially against the men, it's just a good feeling. I can carry the ball and play it out and someone will shout ‘great ball, Jennifer’ or ‘hard luck, Jennifer’. I just feel really good. (Jennifer, 64)

Likewise, Patrick (51) described his elation for ‘putting a pair of boots on, lacing them up and getting out there, crossing that white line, and just playing again’. Yet other players sometimes found it challenging to articulate such pleasures. For Michael (66), ‘the thrill of playing football again’ was a ‘massive release’, yet ‘it's something you really can't describe, it's like the buzz’. Similarly, Bob (73) claimed:

It's difficult to explain for me. I don't know whether you feel this, but sometimes if I'm in the garden, maybe with the grandkids, and there's a ball there, it's just there's a sense of feeling the ball and kicking the ball. It's not really an intellectual thing. It's a physical thing really. That's a bit vague. I just love playing football.

The pleasures of playing walking football were deeply embodied. In addition, players heralded walking football as providing them with a ‘release … I don’t think about anything’ (Jacob, 63). This seemed particularly pertinent for participants who were still employed and/or have other ‘stressors’ (Eric, 59), such as chronic illness, in their lives:

You forget about the outside world. You forget about everything at all … I can't explain to you, Gareth, but there's something bonkers about just kicking a bag of wind about isn't there [laughs]? A great pass, scoring a goal, saving a goal. (Ernest, 62)

Another way in which participants discussed their bodies related to being surprised by their own physical capacities and skills. Gregory (72) described his ‘astonishment’ when ‘I make a pass, I think, how the hell did I do that?’. Likewise, when describing his first training session playing as a goalkeeper, Jasper (70) said:

I said to them ‘I’ve always played in goals, but I haven't played for a while’. I was there in goal, first shot, dived, put it around the post. And I thought, where the hell did that come from?! So, it was still there 30 years later. I played in goal at quite a high level when I was a youngster and it's still here today.

Similarly, Finn (65) said:

You think you're never going to kick a ball again or do anything … And all of a sudden, all that twisting and turning, it's still there. I hit some goals in last night. It was like going back to when I was twenty …You've got everything still there. You don't lose it … It's like you're a 16-year-old again. All those memories come back … I'm still like a schoolboy, all excited about it.

Players recalled their bodily capacities developed from a young age. The ‘knowing bodies’ of experienced players showed a strong ‘sense or feel for the game’ (Kyed and Damsgaard Thomsen, 2025: 4). They recovered a set of embodied competencies cultivated from their youth (Wheaton, 2019). For several players, particularly men, walking football was an outlet for ‘recreating a lot of people's lost youth’ (Edgar, 62). Others, like Finn (see above), claimed they felt ‘like being a kid again’ (Oscar, 62), having ‘reverted back to our childhood … we're trying to reclaim our childhood’ (Zachary, 62):

I remember as a kid getting my first pair of new football boots. And seeing these guys turn up in their late fifties with their first pair of Puma Kings and they're like, ‘look at these bad boys’ … It is that reliving the youth and getting that spark back in your life. (Lawrence, 58)

Playing football, even in a modified form, triggered embodied memories for players. Vincent (65) claimed that ‘walking football is just an extension of me from 30 years ago’, whilst Elliot (70) said ‘I'm back doing what I started 65 years ago which is playing football in the garden’. Whilst their body surprised them in positive ways, they also identified moments in which they, and other players, lamented an inability to develop a mastery over their bodies by struggling to navigate a ‘fine line between walking and running’ (Arthur, 58). This was particularly true for players who have ‘just dipped out of playing proper football’ and who ‘find it quite difficult to adapt from that type of football to walking’ (Theodore, 68):

It's walking football, but I have a tendency to run even at 66. I'm quite fit, with all modesty. [Referees are] forever blowing the whistle, you can't run, you can’t make contact from behind, things which you rarely ran into in normal football. That was the one thing I had to get used to, and it's still sometimes a problem with these trials and tournaments. (Michael, 66)

Players’ attempts at running were occasionally described as ‘cheating’, but this was primarily perceived as them struggling to adapt from running football and ‘getting carried away with the competitiveness of it’, but this ‘gradually tends to go with age’ (Edward, 76). Participants, thus, relearn bodily techniques and embodied understandings to become a walking footballer (Moles, 2021).

It was clear that older people experienced a range of visceral pleasures when playing walking football that were described through the body. The embodied and visceral pleasures of leisure are identified elsewhere (Minello and Nixon, 2017; Moles, 2021), but less so in research focused on older people's involvement in sport (for an exception, see: Pheonix and Orr, 2014). Whilst ‘it is common for the ageing physical body to become increasingly marginalised’, there are possibilities for walking footballers ‘to experience hidden visceral processes and vibrant physicality’ (Monaghan, 2001: 351). Rather than simply being an instrumental game, walking football aroused ‘physical passions’ and was ‘joyful, intense, and passionate’ (Nettleton, 2013: 202). Attending to the visceral provides an insight into why people continue to play sport in later-life.

‘Great, i’ve got aches and pains!’: Bodily discomfort and injury

Many participants discussed their bodies in relation to the aches and pains caused by playing walking football. Previous literature suggests bodily discomfort is a deterrent for older people engaging in active leisure pursuits and, so, they adjust their activities accordingly (Evans and Sleap, 2012). This is a reason for the existence of walking football: to allow for the participation of players who are unable to play running football. However, despite being an adapted sport, walking football did still cause bodily discomfort and pain – and many participants welcomed this:

I don't mind the aches and pains. In fact, I think, well, great, I've got aches and pains! I haven't had aches and pains for 10 years! (Evan, 65)

Due to the age of participants, bodily discomfort and injuries were viewed as ‘inevitable’, but ‘the pain is worth the pleasure’ (Vincent, 65). For Charles (65), he knew playing football ‘is going to hurt, but that's not a deterrent in any way, it's the price you have to pay’. Several participants experienced painful injuries – including torn muscles and broken bones – but they all returned once recovered; ‘as you get older, you're more prone to injury, a little bit more brittle. But at our age, we all ache. It's a full-on game … You've had a really good workout’ (Susan, 67). Likewise, Alexander (69) claimed:

Walking football is supposed to be easy, but because of my back, it's not that easy. You're fighting the pain all the time. I don't let it stop me. I just try and push through it … You're going to get aches and pains. We're all getting older. That's all part of sport.

Bodily evidence of exertion and ‘playing through the injuries’ (Elliot, 70) was a worthwhile and laudable pursuit for many participants:

I quite like [pain and aches] because it's sort of like a virtuous result. I know I push my body when it's giving me some feedback later. I've got into non-inflammatory diets that's cut down the physical reaction I get quite considerably. (Jeremy, 72)

Not all participants made wholescale changes to their lifestyle like Jeremy. Nonetheless, they managed ailments themselves to care for their own bodies. For instance, Eugene (51) stated:

There are the things that they always hurt, but I don't care. Because when I get home, I have a nice warm bath. You don't mind about having to struggle up the stairs for three days because you had a really nice hour and a half of sport and exercise. With walking football, the enjoyment outweighs the fact that you've got all these ailments because you're getting on.

Another mode of bodily management was tempering their involvement. Edward (76) said that age means people become ‘conscious of your body’ and, when ‘getting a niggle’, he ‘will give it a rest that week’. Old age was a period that ‘brings illness and more limitations’ (Vincent, 65). As such, participants like Tobias (71) said ‘I have to be a little bit careful and I'm carrying a few injuries, but I have to temper my enthusiasm with a little common sense’. There was an embodied awareness among participants that their bodies were under threat by participating in sport; ‘there is more of a chance that people get injured at our age group and have other real illnesses that come along’ (Otto, 71).

Extreme incidents, including players having a heart attack and/or dying on the football pitch, were mentioned by several participants. Interestingly, this rarely acted as a disincentive. Whilst actions were taken to monitor player welfare, such as installing defibrillators and ensuring they have players’ health information to hand, they planned to continue playing into old(er) age; ‘as long as I can do it, I will do it … I will only give this up if I can't physically do it anymore’ (Vincent, 65). Even so, several participants expressed concerns about the bodily harms caused by other players. Betty (67), for instance, told a story of a (male) player purposely injuring her which meant she had to have surgery. She continued:

Over-physicality, questioning decisions, pushing, shoving … There's a lot of physicality in the game which shouldn't be there. It shouldn't matter that you've got a pacemaker. It shouldn't matter that Billy has got a metal hip. It shouldn't matter that I've got two knees because there should be no physicality in walking football. It should be a game of passing and moving. If we got that right, you'd have a lot more people wanting to have a go. But they get put off by seeing elitist men running and shoving and pulling shirts, because the skill factor is not there.

For Betty, misbehaviour has a gendered component – i.e., of men over-compensating for their limited ‘skill’. Elsewhere, I have discussed how older men's participation in walking football becomes a way to perform hegemonic masculinity (Thomas and Thurnell-Read, 2024) and how aggressive male players were policed and sanctioned during matches (Thomas, 2024). For Betty, excesses of physicality were not welcome, but were also not exclusive to men's teams. Betty described another occasion in which she played against a women's team which ‘was horrible as they were kicking and pushing and shoving and everything that we’ve tried to eradicate out the game’. Yet, many participants recognised the risk of overzealous (mostly male) players causing injuries. They subsequently emphasised a need to look out for others; players were ‘super sensitive’ as ‘most of them have experienced [injuries], they've got their own aches and pains’ (Edgar, 62). Participants described moments where games were stopped when a player was hurt or where adaptations were made to ensure players – including those with dementia, chronic illness and/or disability, and those who simply cannot play at a quick pace – can also play (e.g., slowing play; avoiding tackles; passing to them).

Elsewhere, I have framed these as acts of care and inclusion (Thomas, 2025a). Here, I contend making sure players ‘enjoy the game and come off in one piece’ is a way to identify and appreciate the precarity of (some) ageing bodies. When these informal rules were breached, this was managed in different ways, ranging from private or public reprimand to immediate expulsion (Thomas, 2024). There was a functional ‘censure of violence and aggression and an emphasis on an ethic of care and inclusion’ (Allain, 2022: 3). Whilst competitiveness and fervour were accepted as indicative of ‘the excitement for and emotional investment in these games’, players ‘carefully collaborate to regulate these expressions so that they do not escalate and spoil the excitement’ (Kyed and Damsgaard-Thomsen, 2025: 1). Here, players ‘set boundaries against excessively aggressive play based on a reflexive awareness of the vulnerability of the ageing body’ (2025: 12).

Participants often recognise the threat of injury that would curb their participation due to bodily vulnerabilities; as they age, ‘the body's fleshy limitations cannot currently be overcome’ (Phoenix and Smith, 2011: 636). Yet older people mostly suggested that bodily discomfort was normalised, manageable, and even embraced. Contrary to the Masters athletes in Hookway et al.'s (2024: 513) research, injured and pained bodies did not always ‘lurk as ubiquitous threats to identity and participation’. Adaptations were made in appreciation of how some older bodies ‘become less compatible with the physical demands of youth and sports practices’ (Wheaton, 2019: 392). Yet, the ‘fatigue, niggles, and pain are a normalised if not valorised feature’ of walking football, indicative of a corporeal aliveness (Hookway et al., 2024: 513).

Discussion

This article has recognised the centrality of the body in the narratives of older people playing walking football and how they can reclaim the corporeal body outside a conventional ageist lens of deficit and decline. Older people foreground their bodies in their stories of participating in sport in later life by highlighting the physical benefits and demands of walking football. Moreover, players describe their visceral pleasures and how their bodies move in unanticipated but lively ways. Finally, whilst injuries and pain can limit participation, bodily discomfort is accepted and embraced. Data in this article reveal that ‘the magic, memories, skills, frailties, dangers, pain and fun’ that are associated with the embodied practice of walking football ‘permeate the body’ (Nettleton, 2013: 209). This is what Nettleton (2013: 209) calls an ‘existential capital’, comprising of ‘visceral pleasures, corporeal resources and a novel form of sociality’. Rather than disregarding the physical manifestation of bodily ageing or stopping playing (Wainwright and Turner, 2006), walking footballers reconcile with their bodies in ways that demonstrate how (older) bodies that are often forgotten or ridiculed are celebrated because of their strength and vitality (Bates and Moles, 2024).

This is not to rigidly and mawkishly extol older people's later-life leisure as unproblematic. As Phoenix and Orr (2014: 100) recognise, the ‘corporeality of the ageing process can constrain pleasures’, nor should we ‘champion heroic narratives’ of those who appear to age well. Bodies can be ‘experienced as an obstacle’, as ‘weakening senses, slowing gait, chronic pain and so forth’ (Pickard, 2014: 1284). Yet, we must also recognise the productive capacities of the ageing body. Walking football provides a way to reassert how older bodies are a site of (positive) lived experience. Acknowledging this, though, must occur without reifying neoliberal discourses of active ageing, where physical activity is represented as a remedy for improving population health and confronting ageing as a public health crisis.

Relatedly, we must avoid an uncritical celebration of exercise. Gibson (2025: 99) suggests that evidence of health promotion in sport/exercise is ‘on shaky ground’, how its opportunity costs (such as injury) are frequently underplayed and/or omitted, and how its virtues are frequently ‘unknowable and unproveable’. Nonetheless, for Gibson (2025: 100), ‘debates around optimal frequency and forms of exercise abound’, which risks overlooking ‘other aspects of life, society, and culture that have far more profound impacts on our health’, such as health inequalities; ‘you cannot jog your way out of poverty, nor press-up depression away’. I accept and endorse these positions, and I am cautious to avoid reproducing ‘a tyranny of cheerfulness that provides no place for those people who do not wish to or cannot view aging as a positive experience’ (Phoenix and Smith, 2011: 636). However, we must take the claims of older people in this study seriously. Sport was highly valued by older people, and its benefits were commonly communicated through a discussion of their bodies.

I conclude by calling for further research on walking football and adapted sports more broadly, including sport for older people. For Goodison et al. (2025: 1538), who calls for ‘more rigorous and broad research’ on walking football and other walking sports, studies should, for example, focus on women's participation and its barriers. This reflects some of the limitations of my own project. Participants were mostly white men who are UK nationals. As such, the project may have neglected how participation, and non-participation, in walking football was shaped by race, class, gender, and local and national contexts. Walking football is often celebrated as an inclusive activity (Thomas, 2024, 2025a), but data suggest participation is still dominated by white men (Loadman, 2019).

I also encourage sociologists to explore the embodied experiences of older people participating in sport. As Hurd-Clarke and Korotchenko (2011) acknowledge, our experiences of aging are embodied. Sport provides an avenue for offering alternative narratives of ageing bodies – that become both the source and location of pleasure – too often configured as physically in decline and ‘a cage that removes the ability for many to express their ‘true’ identity’ (Evans and Sleap, 2012: 518). Indeed, whilst ageing ‘can be studied as a social as much as a biological process, there is rarely any escaping its corporeality’ (Gilleard, 2022: 883). A focus on (positive) embodiment and ageing bodies offers insights into ‘the complex, diverse, embodied and lived experiences of people as they grow older’ (Martin and Twigg, 2018: 3). As Turner (1984: 1) notes, we all ‘have bodies’ and ‘are bodies’. Older people participating in sport are no exception.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the participants who were so enthusiastic about, and engaged with, my study. I am grateful to the journal editors and invited reviewers for providing recommendations which have improved this article.

ORCID iD

Gareth M Thomas

Ethical approval

Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee. All interviewees granted written and/or verbal informed consent for both participation in the project and for publication. Interviews were anonymised by using pseudonyms at the transcription stage prior to analysis and publication.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability statement

Data is unavailable for sharing.

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