Ian McMillan: My games of a lifetime on The Top Field

I've mentioned before that my grandson Thomas (he's six now,

unbelievably, and I'm as young as I ever was) is, in the words of the old song, football crazy.

Every Friday he goes to Oakwell, the home of the mighty Barnsley FC, to train, and he's joined a football team called the Brierley Cubs. Presumably later in life they become the Brierley Bears and eventually the Brierley Grizzlies, a team you wouldn't want to tangle with in the woods.

He came with his mum for dinner on Sunday and he proudly showed us his new kit; over the Yorkshire puddings I quizzed him on the results of various football matches from the season that has just ended, and he knew them all, from the Premier League downwards.

After dinner, he played football in the garden with his mum and then they came in and announced that they were going up to The Top Field to play, and that's when I began to become that PE teacher from the

film that's part of South Yorkshire's defining myth. I went with them,

not wanting to miss out on the action, even though I knew that more than a little of Brian Glover's ridiculousness would settle over me as I began to play.

Ah, The Top Field, otherwise known as The Big Field or sometimes, simply, The Field. It's the place where, on a Sunday morning, you can see team after team of all ages and in all kinds of leagues playing their hearts out on a muddy or dusty surface.

Parents on the touchline shout and gesticulate because they secretly wish they were the ones with the boots on; flat-capped men stand and watch and compare the game to one in a black-and-white photo at the back of their mind; an odd stray dog runs on to the pitch and either bites the ball and pops it or runs off with it in the direction of the Co-op or The Longbow.

The Top Field has always had a major part to play in Darfield's collective memory, its overriding image of itself. The Gala (pronounced Gayla in the South Yorkshire way) has been held there over the years and the local secondary school come there for games, and when its vast grassy acres have been hit by rumours of development, local protest has been loud and long.

In the warm and hopeful evenings of the 1998 World Cup, I went up there with my lad Andrew to play football on the days when there wasn't a match and now, here I am with another generation ready to kick a ball.

When Thomas's mum was little, I remember pushing her across The Top Field in a buggy that had seen better days and sterling service with her older sister; halfway across the grass the buggy gave up the ghost and axles went and the wheels just about fell off and I had to carry Lizzie and the buggy home, looking like some kind of novelty runner in a marathon. And now she's grown up and I'm still as young as I ever was.

Despite the fact that our Thomas isn't the biggest lad, he enjoys being a goalkeeper; up on the huge Top Field the goalposts are huge, too, but he still insisted on being in the nets. I was Barnsley and Thomas and his mum were, for some reason, Newcastle. Then Lizzie went in the nets for a while.

Then I went in the nets, but usually it was Thomas keeping the goals out. In my head, and sometimes out loud like Brian Glover, I kept a running commentary and after a while I noticed that the running was taking over the commentary. I began to notice that I was out of breath and my legs were starting to hurt; like the PE teacher in Kes, I started to realise that I wasn't as fit as I thought I was.

The thing is that Thomas and I normally play football in our house, in the space at the bottom of the stairs, or sometimes we play outside in the back garden until my wife shouts: "Mind my plants!"

We then have to troop back indoors but indoors or outdoors I'm not running very far. The Big Field is the size of some former Soviet Republics, and I spent most of my time chasing after the ball, and,

like Brian Glover, I'm not really built for it despite the fact I've been trying to get fit.

And then, just before we went home, an archetypal Top Field incident happened. A bloke walked past. He stood and watched us for a moment. Thomas made a spectacular save and the bloke shouted "Sign him up for Barnsley!" and Thomas glowed with pride. So save this column and remember the name: Thomas Smith, England's Number One.