Tim Carter is 56 but he is still managing to play football pretty much week in, week out.

That’s down to his fitness and enthusiasm for the great game of course but it’s also due to the fact that there is an excellent veterans’ set-up in the county.

Carter plays for Southside Star FC Veterans who are just one of a whole host of clubs who play in the Gloucestershire FA Veterans’ League.

“It’s great,” said Carter. “There are nine teams in our division and we play everyone twice which means we are playing every two or three weeks.

“That allows players to recover and also means it is not quite such of a commitment.

“Games are 11-a-side, 40 minutes each way and with officials provided by the GFA.”

That’s not far off ‘proper’ football and Carter continued: “You have to be over 40 to play although you are allowed to play two outfield players aged 35 to 40. They’re the ones who do all the running!”

Southside Star play in North Division Two and there is also a 10-team North Division One plus a South Division which caters for teams in and around Bristol.

Matches take place on Sundays with the North Division One teams playing their matches at the All Saints Academy in Cheltenham and the Division Two teams playing theirs at Hartpury College.

“The standard is pretty good,” added Carter. “The Gloucestershire FA want to encourage the 35-to-40-year-olds to keep playing and we’ve got four or five of them in our squad who we rotate. We’ve got a squad of about 20 players in total and some of them are as old as 56 or 57.”

Those players in their mid-50s are eligible to play in the Gloucestershire FA Super Veterans League as well.

In fact, anyone 50 and above can play in the super vets’ league and that’s something that Carter has also taken advantage of in recent seasons.

“It’s a smaller, separate league and teams are seven-a-side,” he explained. “There are seven teams in our league and matches are played at Tewkesbury School on a Sunday morning.

“We play about once a month and matches are 15 minutes each way. We play across a third of a normal sized pitch with small goals and when we play we tend to have two fixtures on each day.”

And as with the veterans’ league, Carter is a big fan.

“It’s an opportunity to continue to play football,” he said. “We don’t necessarily run as much but you can still have a competitive kickaround with your mates in the fresh air. It’s enjoyable, not too serious and a way of building up your appetite for Sunday lunch!”

Born in Jersey, Carter was a half-decent player back in the day, representing the island of his birth at age group level up to 18 many years ago.

But when he moved to Bristol to further his education he pretty much stopped playing football and it was another 25 years before he got involved again.

As so often happens, it was through his son Tom, who is now 21, that he rediscovered his passion for something that had been such a big part of his life growing up.

“It was while Tom was at Naunton Park Primary School,” said his dad, who is an account manager in Gloucester. “He played for a year at Charlton Rovers before moving to Southside when he was about 11.

“That’s when I got interested again. I used to watch him play and gradually I got more and more involved, collecting training cones, taking down nets, that sort of thing.”

And of course it went from there.

“One of the coaches asked me if I’d do some coaching,” he said. “That was when my son was in the under-12s or under-13s and I did his team all the way through to the under-17s.”

Carter senior still wasn’t playing at this stage, so what prompted him to get a pair football boots on again?

“Southside had quite a lot of youth teams from the ages of eight through to 18,” he explained, “but they all tended to do their own thing.

“The club wanted them to communicate more and we thought if we formed a team for the coaches – most of them were in their 30s and 40s – this would help. And the veterans’ team was a way of bringing the coaches together.”

That was in 2013 and thanks in the main to Carter they are still going strong.

“I’m manager, secretary and treasurer of both our veterans’ teams,” said Carter, before adding, “and kit man too although Mrs Carter is responsible for the laundry most weeks!”

He’s a player as well of course and although sometimes a centre-forward for the school team – Victoria College, Jersey – he mainly played in central defence in the late 70s and early 80s in the days when the likes of Terry Butcher were starting to make big names for themselves.

So was Carter a Terry Butcher type of centre-half?

“I was a bit more cultured,” he laughed, “definitely more Alan Hansen.”

And he’s played in goal this season as well and even though they lost 4-3, he said: “I’m happy to play in goal if no one else wants to because I can play out from the back.

“Everyone wants to play up front and it’s no different in veterans’ football, so you’ve just got to do what you have to do for the team.”

Fortunately, Tim Carter is more than happy to do that!