The office soccer team has fallen apart amid accusations, counter accusations and recriminations. The main reason seems to be the start of college courses on Monday evenings, which has removed several players, plus the decision by Adam Russell to play for a local semi-professional team (“He’s not semi-professional” Adrian Taylor told me scornfully, “…he’s only in the Reserves”).

Adam Russell and Keith Williams (both on the Sales Desk) founded the team about two years ago amid considerable scepticism from older members of staff who doubted their organising ability. They had persuaded Managing Director Trevor Bush to fund the team, and had played two matches per week since then, slowly climbing up the local league. The culmination of their efforts came earlier this summer when they had won the league and brought back an impressive trophy.

The defection of Adam Russell (short stature, short fair hair heavily gelled, a habit of standing up whenever talking on the telephone) has caused a great deal of bad feeling, and frequent loud arguments have been breaking out on the Sales Desk (quickly quelled by Manager Daniel Slattery). When Adam joined the company he was barely eighteen, and so quiet that few people thought he would survive in the Darwinian dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the Sales Desk. Now he has become one of the most loud-mouthed people in the company, so cheeky that the more senior sales staff feel it is their duty to put him down at every opportunity.

Every Friday Marketing sends out an e-mailed “newsletter” with each department submitting their news for the week. Keith Williams has just come over with an entry he would like to go in this week’s e-mailed publication.

“Hello buddy, you alright?” he said, handing me the handwritten Sports News which included the paragraph:

A special thank you to Adam 'Self-Centred' Russell, who has decided to leave the team. Not only did he let us down this week by not turning up, he had the goalie gloves so Keith Williams had no gloves in goal, he then shows a complete lack of commitment by pulling out half way through the league. Despite us all agreeing to commit to it at the beginning so this leaves us struggling to find a team and when someone does this, it makes you wonder if all the money the other players have invested in the club is worth it.

He then wandered off singing the chorus from a Black Eyed Peas song: Where is the love, where is the love, where is the love, where is the love, the love, the love…