I am always thinking how lucky we are with the modern technologies in gloves, boots, football balls, the gear of great quality and good protection and other modern tecks for goalkeepers! Going back to the roots, that helps to appreciate modern technologies even more, thought to post some older equipment that was used well not so long time ago really! Less than 100 years ago, our favourite gk legends played with bare hands or using whatever handy- rubber , cotton or often handmade thin leather gloves, not for protection of hands but for better grip with the ball , especially wet one. As the result - often brused , broken , dislocated fingers! And the ball used to be made of heavy leather with laces ,that in rainy weather would absorb large amounts of water, making the ball significantly heavier , often described as "Cannonball" by the end of the match!! And you would need to catch it with nearly bare hands. Absolute heroes they were to play in these conditions! Was interesting to discover that the first screw in studs boots were invented by ordinary german shoe maker and a passionate football admirer Adolf (Adi) Dassler - the founder later of Adidas brand ! His brother created Puma brand. While so popular now rubber fins boots were created by South African born Australian former pro football midfielder Craig Johnston, after he had to finish his career at 27 due to serious family reasons . His idea was initially rejected by most brands like Adidas, Nike and Reebok until he recorded and showed the footage of few German legends playing in his boots in the snow and Adidas agreed to promote them. I put some pictures of vintage gloves, ball and boots creators. Hope it was interesting, learning myself a lot of new things since entering this group😊

Xavier Stark! 👏 Guys, Xavier has held the No. 1 spot on our leaderboard every single week since he joined. For well over a year, he’s given his time to answer questions, share what he knows and encourage goalkeepers and parents in this community. Xavier, I want to thank you personally. Every time you take a moment to help someone, you give a keeper a little more confidence or help a parent better understand how to support their child. That’s exactly what I hoped this community would become when I started it. I think everyone who’s benefited from your advice will agree you’ve more than earned this jersey from former England and Man City goalkeeper Joe Hart. Congratulations, mate! Drop me a DM and I’ll get your jersey sent out to you. Ray

We arrived to our away game at 8:30 this morning to find a coach from the other team telling us the match is off as the pitch is frozen at one end. Funnily enough they passed the message on to their team but hadn't thought to let us know until we turned up! Grassroots football eh 🙄 On the plus side it's given Dylan time to heal up before next week. He suffered this turf burn from his schools astro pitch in the week and can barely bend his leg. Dylan being Dylan, just bandaged it up and was ready to play through the pain barrier. (My suggestion of deep heat was met with a short two word answer 🤣🤣) Built different 💪🏻

Hi everyone, I was wondering if any of you are editing experts? I filmed parts of Xavier's game today, i know with this new team he is on, there are a couple of boys that can't be posted but not sure which, so was going to try and blur out most of the other players. I use capcut on my Samsung and I duplicated and overlayed the videos and then blurred out the top videos but after that got completely stuck, any ideas please? Kirsty

Hugo is super happy to finally sign his official contract for j4k and be part of the community 👏