The beautiful game has taken Bill Docherty from a pro team in Scotland to a coaching gig in California to representing Canada at the World Nations Cup of walking football.

As a teenager he played in Scotland’s First Division, about 20 miles from Glasgow for his hometown team Greenock Morton.

“I played soccer at a high level and then moved to California when I was 20 years old,” recalled Docherty, now 64 and working as a technical recruiter in Burlington, Ontario. “Then I quickly stumbled across a coaching opportunity.

“In San Diego I met a couple of women and they were looking for a coach. One of them had a child with her, so I thought they were asking on behalf of a kids team.”

It turned out they were asking on behalf of their own competitive amateur team – representing nearby Coronado, an island known for celebrity homes and a naval base – launching Docherty’s coaching career.

Today, he gets his weekly walking soccer game in at the Pine Glen Soccer Center in Oakville with the Wild Walkers. The club mixes its teams each week.

“Everybody comes out, we try to balance the teams, and everybody has a good time,” Docherty said.

He concedes that walking has been an adjustment.

“We're all creatures of habit and these are things that we've been doing for 60 years or 70 years,” Docherty said. “Not that we can run very fast, but some people transition easier than others.”

Like many walking soccer players, Docherty finds the game to be better exercise than he expected.

“It's like a speed walk,” he said. “You're constantly walking, as opposed to running and stopping.”

Docherty has a sense of humour about the additional preparations needed to play a sport in his mid-60s.

“I take performance enhancing drugs – a Tylenol before I start and an Advil when I finish,” he said with a laugh.

Docherty was part of the team organized by the Canadian Walking Soccer Association to play in August 2023 at the World Nations Cup in the over 60 division.

The players did not meet until they got to England, two days before the tournament. Through a business contact, Docherty had arranged for some pick-up games at a training facility in Burton upon Trent.

“We were strangers from across the country who had never played together, but we gelled, and it was absolutely fantastic,” he recalled.

It was a challenge to find tactics that matched the occasion. “For walking soccer, all we had ever played was recreational,” Docherty said.

The competition was held in Stratfordshire, England at the Football Association's St. George’s Park, where the Three Lions and Lionesses squads train.

“We played in an unbelievable £105 million facility, and even sat in the England dressing room, as if we were with Harry Kane,” said Docherty. “It was like being a 15-year-old kid again.”

In the group stage, Canada won three of five matches, and then continued on to the knockout stage.

“There was nobody more surprised than us,” said Docherty.

It was so unexpected that, Docherty had to make an awkward call to his UK business contact, a supporter of Burton Albion in England’s League One.

“My client arranged for us all to see a professional game and meet the owner in his box with drinks and lunch and everything else, because I didn’t think we were going to get past the first stage,” Docherty said. “I had to phone him up to say ‘Sorry, we’re in the semi-finals of a world championship and we can’t come.’”

They beat Northern Ireland in the quarter-finals before losing to England, the eventual champions, and finishing fourth.

Pat Brody, also from the Wild Walkers, led the team with eight goals and George Lubberts of Lethbridge, Alberta won the tournament’s Best Goalkeeper Award.

At 82, another Oakville clubmate, Phil Seward was the oldest player in the tournament.

Looking ahead, Docherty sees potential for Canada in future tournaments, especially if teams are entered in more age groups.

“If we had an over 70s team, it could really compete because we have so many over 70s players in Canada,” he said.