I've reached the age where injuries come all too easily. I literally hurt myself sleeping these days: when the bed sheets are tucked in too tight, my achilles ache for days.

I tried to do some push-ups and strained a muscle – not in my arms or shoulders, but my calf, go figure.

Figuring we might limp out of the group stage with an honourable loss, we strapped on shinpads and strapped up ankles and took to the court for a friendly trundle.

Or it was meant to be. People were playing for sheep stations. Who would have thought accountants would be so aggressive, I expected it from the council team but …

Somehow we figuratively and literally limped into the final (winning once I’d left the court) but there wasn’t enough Epsom Salts in the prize pack to soak out the pain.

Reading a story about a teenager having to decide about playing football or soccer after this year taking the field for one code on Saturday and the next on Sunday just makes my bones ache. Fair play to you youngblood.

The world is always moving on and coming behind you is someone fitter, better and more committed. It is always thus in sport, in life and in the workplace.

There were some comments from a former reporter recently, questioning the quality, commitment and skill of those that went after them.

Like the quote that patriotism is the belief your country is the best for the simple fact you live there, the belief that a workplace was better for your presence is specious at best and arrogant at worse.

We all make a contribution. We all have blindsides. We will all be replaced by smarter and quicker youngbloods, like our football code-hopper who can play two games a weekend without a thought.

That is how it should be. Glory days do not exist; not in the way we think they do.

When I first started journalism, I longed for the nostalgia those senior heads around me experienced: typewriters, stories phoned in to copytakers, hot metal and linotype, not to mention the six stubbies, a cigar and unlimited swearing allowed on the sub-editing desk on Saturday night.

Recently a new reporter thought my early days of fax machines, internet on one computer in the corner and no email was quaint. Told you I'm getting old.

We love to romaticise bygone eras, however recent. It is probably why I struggle to read a novel written post World War II and kick myself for selling a 1966 Pontiac GTO. (Do not tell my wife but I have my eye on a ’64 Ford Falcon like my dad owned.) 

Yet the notion of glory days is a fallacy. A colleague laughs at the idea. “Was there one?” he asks, rhetorically. “Glory day, maybe. Glory afternoon, perhaps.”

Listen to the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name to understand the delusion of sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory. It leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories (apologies to the Boss).

Is is the kind of thinking that left Tasmania mired in the doldrums for too long. That, and a cargo cult mentality of one panacea future-proofing the economy.

There is no such thing; no such place.

Like the natives building airfields in the jungle, which no plane could land on, waiting for John Frum to return, we looked to single industries with little to no value added locally to sustain us.

That mindset is rapidly changing. And it needs to. Tasmania is a smarter state now, more diversified in its economic drivers: a less insular worldview and view of itself.

But more needs to be done to encourage innovation and diversity.

A series of youngbloods are stepping up with new ideas. They need the support and encouragement of the old heads around them. We are in it together, after all.

As an old soccer coach was fond of saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you always got.”

The old heads in the futsal team like to think it was our wisdom and experience that guided us through to glory.

More likely it was the two 17-year-old sons of old heads who ran like Energizer bunnies, kicked crucial goals and went off, not because they were hobbled, but because they enjoyed the laugh from the bench.