Tales from the Fireside

This week’s blog comes to you through a fug of snot, tissues and empty sachets of Lemsip so apologies in advance for any errors in accuracy, grammar or typography.

Last Friday’s match was a well fought 4-4 draw. Through the fog of my man ‘flu symptoms I believe that the two teams were as follows:

Bibs – me, David, Alex, Steve, Yev, Andy, a new bloke called Arran (?), Spizz, Mark, Ross 

Colours – Simon Gas, Paul, Danny, Dan, Ian, Nick (beard), Liam, old(er) Phil, specialist goalkeeper Phil

The Bibs tore into a three goal lead – the first two goals coming from Mark, who was cutting in from the wide left to great effect and the third coming from Alex who found himself about two yards out following some slick interplay between himself and Yev. Danny had gone close earlier, uncharacteristically missing a free header, but all looked set fair for the Bibs.

Dan, however, had other ideas. Chiefly through his supreme efforts in midfield he dragged the Colours level, with one of his goals coming from a lung bursting run down the left where he squeezed a shot in between the last defender (me) and the goalkeeper’s near post. 

Another outing for mercurial new wave icon Spizz, although the shock-haired rock front man was a little off the pace this week, contriving to miss a number of chances that he would usually tuck away with what they used to call ‘great aplomb’, including one gilt-edged header which bobbled wide of the post from a centre by myself. The Friday night multitude seem to be coming to grips with the new head high rule and there were a number of headed efforts, one from Ian reminiscent of Steve Bould in his pomp as he gave it the eyebrows from a corner only to see the ball plop just over the bar. 

The Colours’ superb come back appeared complete when they took a four-three lead, only for Steve to restore parity with a driven shot that had him commentating on his own finishing. Four apiece it ended, although Simon Gas was accused of blowing up too soon to settle for a draw, much the chagrin of the Bibs in particular, who felt that momentum was on their side.  Probably the right result, in all honesty and as Simon remarked those playing on after the declaration of full-time were reminiscent of Japanese soldiers emerging from the jungles of South East Asia in the 1950’s still believing the war to be on. 

And so to the Skinners Arms where we managed to catch the back-end of the first half of the England game and the entire second half, which was the one with all the goals in. A reasonably good turn out this week, no doubt helped by the added incentive of the World Cup qualifier. Despite Ian’s misgivings about Roy Hodgson’s ability to select an attacking side I thought that picking Andros Townsend was a bold move and one that clearly paid off. The Scottish landlord’s Highland yell when Montenegro scored was soon silenced by England’s third goal. The most notable incident from the pub this week was my inadvertent theft of Ian’s pint – I’d bought a pint of something called Fireside which on reflection should have been thrown there, while Ian had ordered the altogether more palatable Haka. 

There’ll be more tasting notes from me in a couple of weeks as I am going to see former Smith’s guitarist Johnny Marr on Friday. Play up and play the game.