Time we stopped listening to life's ill-set alarm clock

Peter Drury

AGE. DON'T you just hate it? Not old age. Not advancing age. Not even spotty-faced youth. Just age and the manner in which our insistence on its rigid measurement defines our lives and dictates our level of expectation - especially in the sporting sphere.

AGE. DON'T you just hate it? Not old age. Not advancing age. Not even spotty-faced youth. Just age and the manner in which our insistence on its rigid measurement defines our lives and dictates our level of expectation - especially in the sporting sphere.

Human beings, beyond question, develop and deteriorate at a variety of rates. What one adolescent can achieve at 16, another might not reach for three further years. The continuing athleticism of one 37-year-old might be the envy of someone five years his junior. An exhausted 55-year-old, required by the status quo to plough on at work for 10 more years, would happily swap places with the reluctantlyretired 65-year-old filling his empty days at the gym.

Yet, instead of assessing ourselves purely on the basis of our capacity to fill a role in life - or a team - we continue slavishly to adhere to preconceptions based on time elapsed since our date of birth. This must be especially infuriating for the 30-something professional sportsman.

Take, for example, the case of the Wimbledon footballer Robbie Earle. This season, for the first time, he is having to come to terms with being categorised as a veteran. For so long the first name on the team sheet, he is no longer an automatic pick. The newspapers, identifying him as the cerebral sort, have begun to mention him in connection with managerial vacancies. His own manager is offering him greater gaps between games, shorter bursts of action and longer periods on the substitutes' bench.

It happens that Earle is 34 years and nine months old. This is his 18th season as a professional. Over that period, he's played nearly 700 matches for Port Vale and Wimbledon, plus a couple of handfuls for Jamaica. By anyone's standards, he's a had a pretty good innings. Fine. But why, because of the above figures, should it be assumed that his innings is close to closure?

What if no one had been counting? What if Mrs Earle had torn up the birth certificate and stubbornly refused young Robbie the childhood privilege of an annual birthday? What if he'd advanced through school not on the basis of automatic year-by-year promotion, but simply on his capacity to handle his homework? In short, what if no one knew his age?

The other night at Selhurst Park, Earle played the whole two hours of an extended Worthington Cup tie against Sunderland. He has a distinctive knees-up running style which certainly does not appear especially energy-efficient. Yet, I shudder to think of the number of times he must have motored - at full throttle - from box to box. Shaking a captain's fist one moment, tackling manfully the next and then setting off again to involve himself in the next attack. If the concept of age did not exist, the thought would not have occurred that he may not be permitted to do it all again against Bradford City tomorrow.

Presumably, at some point, the Earle motor will fail. When it does, its owner will, no doubt, become painfully aware of the fact and stop playing. But why should the artificial parameters of age hurry him into the pension queue? You don't trade in your 15-year-old, clapped-out Capri because it is 15 years old; you trade it in because it is clapped out.

Nor is this meant as a eulogy to just one player. When West Ham recruited Stuart Pearce, some howled their incredulity on the basis that the year 1962 appears on his passport. OK, so the bodywork is currently under repair, but the engine still purrs. Gordon Strachan, Peter "Pan" Beardsley, Peter Shilton... There are countless examples of those who have woken up on their 35th birthday only to discover that not a lot has changed since they were 34.

The whole argument goes beyond professionalism. Many will identify with the medium-slow bowler at my cricket club who, as he trundles towards 50, is inclined to start calculating how many more years he can carry on playing. Years are irrelevant, Fred, as long as you are still pitching it up on middle and off.

Of course, eventually a sportsmen's legs do "go", his eyesight fades, his strength diminishes. This is no blind refusal to accept those harsher facts of life. It is merely a protest against equating them precisely with a particular page in life's diary.

English sports' apparent nervousness in the face of youthful talent has been an ongoing issue for quite some time now. Michael Owen's delayed introduction to the World Cup in France seems, whether consciously or otherwise, to be dictated by age. His subsequent deeds made the notion of "protecting" him appear not just a little silly. No less silly, though, to stick to preconceptions at the other end of a career. While you can play, play. Once you can't, for heaven's sake stop. But let your body be the judge - not life's ill-set alarm clock.

Peter Drury is an ITV sports commentator