It takes forever, but the sight of all those teams and all those grounds takes me back to my own days as a Roslyn-Wakari junior grade football player.
Whom would we meet this coming Saturday?
The week before last, as my myopic blinking trawled slowly down the page, I was halted midway through the 10th Grade A draw: Mornington Missiles v Caversham Black.
I knew instinctively this would be a game of games, the fearsomely sounding and utterly alliterative Mornington Missiles lined up against one of the city's premier clubs, Caversham, this one subtitled Black, that most demonic of adjectives, a word spelling danger and doom.
Later that day, word came through that the grandson Rowan had been head-hunted by his friend Casper to fill in for a dramatically injured - broken shoulder - team-mate.
For 10 weeks.
Rowan is 9, the rest of the team is 10.
And Rowan is a small 9.
''Do you think this boy Rowan can cut the mustard, Casper?'' asked the coach.
''Absolutely sir,'' replied Casper.
''Rowan gives it all he's got.''
Rowan had actually played football in Chicago, but that was a definitely different kettle of jellybeans.
For a start, he played with Mexicans, so there was an insurmountable language barrier.
The coach may have been a genius, but as he spoke only Spanish, Rowan could never be sure.
And the Mexican children, bigger and often older, played every day with a passion indigenous to that country.
Many nights they played until 10pm.
Rowan had to be in bed by 7.30pm.
So he came here with his football ability undefined.
It was indeed a bold call from his friend Casper.
''Who is he going to play for?'' I playfully asked his mother.
''Caversham Black,'' she replied. An icy chill ran up my spine.
''Do you know who they're playing?'' I asked.
''Mornington,'' she replied.
I fell to the ground.
How could this be so?
The tiny grandson was to make his New Zealand football debut in probably the most testing and cut-throat game of the entire year - in any sport.
The All Blacks' test against South Africa at Ellis Park the next day was but a cotton-woolled crawl across carpet compared with this.
''We have to pull him out of the game - he might get killed,'' I said to the mother.
''Don't be silly,'' came the reply.
''Rowan gives it all he's got.''
I was even more worried when I saw the Mornington Missiles on their home patch.
They bore a shuddering physical similarity to an eastern European rugby team.
Huge people.
Things got worse.
Rowan's mother, whose knowledge of football could be rested on the tip of a pin, had bought him rugby boots by mistake.
''Perfect for this ground, those sprigs will give him extra grip,'' said the coach, bleeding optimism, like all coaches.
And then worse still - Rowan would be the last line of defence.
I looked again at the Mornington Missiles; three of them had grown even since we arrived at the ground.
I couldn't bear to watch.
Caversham Black was missing two other players as well, so there were no subs.
The team would be run ragged for the full 40 minutes, their defence against the towering Mornington strikers a new boy, in rugby boots, the smallest boy on the field, a boy who had played only with Mexicans.
I won't mince about.
Caversham lost 5-0, but the little bleeder Rowan, in foreign footage, playing for the first time with children who could speak his own language, a staggering adjustment, put in a blinder.
He waded into everything with both head and hoof - his use of the face to divert shots made women on the sideline sob.
At one stage he lost a tooth, but with a potential $2 sunk somewhere in the mud, he played on.
And he won Player of the Day.
The New Zealand Football Association struggles with players born overseas, so Rowan's international future is at best cloudy.
But he was still smiling an hour after the game. And that's all that matters.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
