ONE of the proudest boasts of men of my age – and there are few of us left – is that we may not have fought in a war but we survived the fives.

The publication of the Five-A-Side Bible serves as a reminder of what fives once were. Well that and one leg that is shorter than other and enough scar tissue on my knees to serve as a setting for Dancing On Ice.

Now fives are all civilised. I know there will be protests from present participants that it can get bit feisty but that is only said by those who cannot watch the Great British Bake-Off without a comfort blanket and a Valium. New Fives are a convivial night out. Old Fives were considered so violent that they were replaced as entertainment in ancient Rome by a night out with the lions in the Colosseum. And more Christians survived the latter encounters.

New Fives are organised on plastic pitches provided specifically for the game and adjudged by referees. Old Fives were played in gyms, drill halls and backyards and refereed by fully armed members of the UN Peacekeeping force. The action in theses tight spaces was akin to playing keep uppy in a telephone box in the company of a Serbian tiger. There was more bloodshed in old fives, obviously.

One of the most humorous passages in the Five-A-Side Bible concerns the names of teams. There is Agger Diouf Diouf Diouf and the Lesbian Lions. The most darkly apposite, though, is a team called Real Sociopaths. This will raise a smile in 2015. In the 1980s, it would have raised a very nasty bruise. The gym halls were filled with sociopaths and not all of them were PE teachers.

The matches were between Us and Them. No funny names, no contrived humour. Just a drawing of a line in the middle of the hall. A placing of the ball on an imaginary spot. And let loose the hounds of war. It was a particularly brutal form of conflict, an uncivil Civil War. There were no fives leagues then so you played with your mates. You could be on a guy’s side one week and against him the next. Indeed, you could be stamping on a guy’s side one week and be with him the next. The only constant was that the game was played with the sort of commitment that suggested that the future of civilisation rested upon it. This was particularly ironic as it was the best argument for the end of civilisation.

The Fives Bible is also brilliantly informative on how to prepare for a match and how to recover. Preparations for our matches were rudimentary and recovery was usually undertaken at the nearest accident and emergency department. The pre-match meal was usually a fish supper while waiting for a caretaker to find the keys to the hall. The post-match rehydration insisted exclusively of fizzy lager.

To be fair, there were some players at St Ninians Thistle in the 1970s who looked on fives as an essential training exercise, though presumably only as a preparation for life inside the Special Unit at Barlinnie. Some of these guys were so violent that their match preparation consisted of beating up their granny. Or if their granny was deceased, digging up their granny and kicking her bones. Some were slightly more creative and would pre-match simply mug a pensioner. But their idea of mercy was to stop kicking you while you received CPR. Mind you, most of them thought a defibrillator was a device to stop you committing perjury.

The Jags boys would have called Vikings sissies. But they did not have exclusive rights on fives thuggery, Violence was a prerequisite of fives, almost its prime purpose. This was made clear in office fives. The guy who wept salt tears when he discovered someone was using his milk from the fridge would suddenly turn into a homicidal maniac who is so angry one would have thought he had just stepped on an upturned plug.

This is what made the office fives an oddly more dangerous activity than the amateur fitba’ fives. One accepted that the amateur fitba’ fives was the equivalent of being parachuted into the Tet offensive armed with a piece of liquorice. And one adjusted accordingly, meeting fire with flame thrower.

But one could be lulled at the office fives into believing that this was a merry kickaround featuring that quiet guy from accounts. Instead, it was like landing on Omaha beach armed with a bucket and spade. The guy from accounts with a picture of kids on his desk and a row of coloured pens in his breast pocket became a ninja warrior with tackety boots.

There was always a period of silence when the lads returned to the office after the lunch-time fives. Some of this can be ascribed to a sullen atmosphere after heavy challenges. Some of it was in respect of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice.

But the most chilling photie in the Fives Bibles shows a smiling septuagenarian who still plays fives. He looks like a decent chap. But closer scrutiny reveals he has the eye of the tiger. He also has the tiger’s tail, skin and testicles. Serves tiger right for playing fives.

The Five-A-Side Bible is published by Backpage Press and Freight Books at £14.99