Stuart Langworthy has a date with the top brass at the Walking Football Association tomorrow.

One of the founding fathers of Abbeymead Rovers Football Club is one of six short-listed for the manager’s job of England’s over-50 walking team.

“It’s an incredible honour,” said Langworthy, a walking footballer himself. “Just to be invited for an interview is amazing. It just shows how much of an impact Abbeymead have had in the two and a bit years that the club have been involved with the sport.

“Walking football is just about the fastest growing sport in the country and Abbeymead have this year been voted the WFA’s centre of the year for walking football.”

As with everything that Langworthy gets involved in, he believes that if something is worth doing it’s worth doing properly.

The football club themselves were only formed 20 years ago and yet such has been their rapid development that these days they boast well over 40 teams.

The walking football section is threatening to grow almost as quickly as the rest of the club under the ever watchful eye of Langworthy.

“We’ve got over 30 players registered for the over-50s walking football,” said Langworthy with justifiable pride. “We regularly get 15 to 20 turning up every week.

“There are no ex-pros or ex-semi-pros. They all played local league football. There are also a growing number of over-60s playing so the county have set up a league for them this season and we’ve got a team in that as well.”

Throw in a team in the seven-a-side Super Vets League – for players over 50 who still want to run – and it’s obvious that you could never accuse anyone at Abbeymead Rovers of being ageist!

“There are a number of players who play both for the super vets and the walking football,” said Langworthy. “I struggle with the running – 10 years ago I had my hip replaced and I thought I wouldn’t play sport again.

“But now I’m playing walking football and I’m playing at a much higher level than I ever did when I was playing before.

“We’ve just finished third in a national tournament in Birmingham and when we played Manchester City in the Champion of Champions competition we only lost 3-2.

“It’s incredible when you think about it. We’re just a housing estate football club in a rugby-mad city and we’re competing against teams like Leeds United, Manchester City and Portsmouth who are all linked to pro clubs.

“We are a tiny, tiny club compared to some of the others. We’re massively punching above our weight.”

They certainly are, and as well as winning the County League in their first two years of existence, they’ve also twice finished third in the Champion of Champions Cup and reached the final stages of the People’s Cup, to name just some of their successes.

But while they are clearly enjoying clocking up the victories, winning is not the be-all and end-all for Langworthy.

“We refer to the walking football as FFF,” said Langworthy, “fun, friendship and fitness.

“Our health and wellbeing is more important to us than success on the pitch, although we’re happy to win as well. When we played at Manchester City we stayed overnight and we were just like a bunch of kids on tour!”

It’s that kind of attitude that is helping the sport of walking football to grow and grow.

And it’s that kind of attitude that earned the club the accolade of the FA Mars Just Play Walking Football Centre of the Year earlier this year.

In the summer three of the club’s walking footballers – Terry Smith, Chris Fletcher and Mick Sweet – went to St George’s Park, English football’s national training centre, to collect the award which was presented to them by former England full-back Graeme Le Saux.

And it’s not just the men who have got the walking football bug at Abbeymead, because Langworthy’s wife Judith has started playing for the GFA’s over-45 ladies’ team.

“She loves it,” Langworthy chuckled.