Playing competitive football at any level can be extremely demanding, especially if you play for hours on end
Nowadays, a normal professional football match will last for 90 minutes and in some cases, such as a knockout tournament fixture, a game could go on for 120 minutes - but no more than that.
Even with the incredible advances in sport science, playing a match into extra time - two 15-minute periods after the 90 minutes have elapsed - takes a considerable toll on professional footballers.
Issues such as fatigue and muscle cramp are common in plenty of elite-level players in such scenarios, so it's hard to believe that there was a time when games routinely went on longer than that.