A FOOTBALL team is encouraging pensioners to throw down their garden trowel and attack retirement with their toes instead.

Abingdon's walking football club, which offers a slower version of the 'beautiful game', is searching for more players - especially as the current ones keep leaving "to go on cruises".

Steve Willis, 64, joined the Tilsley Park team just over one month ago.

The retired advert writer, who lives with wife Elaine in East Hendred, said: "When people retire it's so easy to get in a rut not knowing what to do. It's worth having this for focus.

"I missed football. The older you get the more you realise you've got to keep yourself active. For me it was a combination of something I needed to do and something I love doing.

"It's sociable as well, it's incredibly enjoyable. I've always tried to keep fit and walk the dog every day, but this is another string to the bow. It's active and competitive, which is something I've missed."

Mr Willis, who played football throughout his youth but stopped in his thirties, said getting back into it was "like riding a bike, just a bit slower".

He encouraged others to join, adding: "You don't have to be wonderful at football, you have just got to want to enjoy it. Nobody gets to laugh at anybody."

The team was set up by Berks and Bucks Football Association, based in Abingdon, in February.

Former football coach Philip Milton, 64, teamed up with the group after retiring in June.

The North Abingdon resident said: "I used to play football about ten years ago but stopped when there were too many youngsters, who were a lot faster than me."

He agreed that the game was less challenging than its "fast, high-tempo" predecessor but warned that it wasn't a total breeze.

He added: "You have to walk fast, it's a power walk. It's still a skill to control the ball and the basic skills of football, it's just a slower game."

There are about six regular members, but Mr Milton said they needed more to ensure that enough people turned out for a five-a-side game.

He joked: "With our age we get pulled muscles and people go off on cruises - we are trying to ban those. Last week one chap didn't turn up because his daughter was in hospital giving birth to his grandchild.

"It's not as much fun with fewer people. And it's more tiring because you have to walk more."

More players would also make the game cheaper, as the team pay £24 a week for the pitch which is split equally between them.

Mr Milton stressed that both women and men are welcome, especially as he set up a girls' football league in Oxford in his youth.

He said: "One of the women who came to coach us used to play football with my daughters when I coached the girls' team."

His three daughters, who are all in their thirties, were among the players he taught the game to after setting up the South Park Girls' football team.

Anyone aged 55-years-old or over who is interested in playing, from 12.30pm until 1.30pm on a Tuesday, can email jonathan.wood@berks-bucksfa.com.