THEY should ban that five-a-side football. I've often thought so, and now I'm convinced.

I've been a sceptic for years, not just because of the muck the so-called beautiful game generates in the car boot, and the noxious holdalls that get left in the hall for you to trip over the morning after the weekly knock-about.

My aversion extends further, much further, than my distaste for decontaminating used football strips that must never inhabit a washing machine at the same time as clothes worn by civilised human beings.

It's the collateral damage associated with this so-called friendly pursuit that really bugs me, along with the way that friends and colleagues are meant to indulge the carnage created in the name of sport each Wednesday evening.

I've lost count of the times I've feigned concern when taking a sickness call from a five-a-sider who's crocked after coming a cropper on the Astroturf.

Outwardly, I'm sympathising. I'm urging proper medical checks, I'm telling the injured party to rest up and I'm wishing them a full and speedy recovery.

Inwardly, I'm seething at being left with a mountain of work by nutters who probably brought the injury on themselves, tackling someone in a style they fondly imagined was full of silky skill.

And part of me believes that, far from being hearty male bonding, five-a-side football is a licence to even the score with that annoying bloke from Accounts by slicing his legs from beneath him on the football pitch.

I'm amazed that employers stand for it, really.

These are, after all, the days of the return-to-work interview and a range of other measures designed to slash absenteeism, prising shirkers from in front of their tellies and back into the office. So why is it still acceptable to take weeks off with what are arguably self-inflicted wounds? The army had the right idea it would have put them in jankers.

If you think I'm taking this a bit personally, you're right. I speak as one whose partner is among the most die-hard of five-a-side footie fanatics and he's done himself an injury yet again.

A couple of his more recent altercations have left him with persistent dodgy ankles. I have tried to be subtle by littering the house with articles about the increased risk of injury to ageing sportsmen, but he clearly does not think they could possibly be talking about him.

Last Wednesday evening, as he left the house for footie, the last thing I said to him was: "Mind your feet this time!" He took me at my word, because it was his wrist that ended up in plaster, and is likely to remain so for the next six weeks at least.

It's amazing how little you can do for yourself when you lose the use of your dominant hand, so t'Other Half is festering away at home, eating left-handed and building an impressive daily pile of washing-up for me to tackle because he must not get his pot wet.

Our medicine cabinet is bristling with snake-oil medications that are meant to accelerate the bone-healing process, and he is on a diet suggested by a range of quack internet sites as being best suited to an optimum recovery.

I am spending my lunch-breaks scouring Waterstones for plot-heavy, character-thin bloke fiction to keep him entertained and scouring Holland and Barrett for something called defatted soy flour (for the proper absorption of calcium, apparently).

I never thought I'd actually say this, but roll on the World Cup. At least it'll take his mind off five-a-side football.