New year, new rules

With the mid-season break behind us na-na-na-nineteen men reported for duty last Friday, each no doubt eager to put the corpulence of the past few weeks behind them. Among the returnees was Alex, hamstring now back in place, and Danny, who revealed that he’d been tucking into cinnamon flavoured Pringles over the festive period. Have you ever heard the like?

With so many chaps playing it’s been a bit of an effort to recall everyone, but I think I’ve got all the players, although it took me a while to recall that Goalkeeping Phil, the specialist, was with us.  The two teams were as follows -

Yellow team: Simon Gas, Alan, Ian Arsenal, Liam, Phil, me, Danny, Alex, Andy

Blue team: Yev, Mick, Ian West Brom, Steve, Bearded Nick (who’s outed himself as a Tottenham fan), Dave, Spizz, Mark, Simon Ink and Goalkeeping Phil

Despite the mid-Winter hiatus all nineteen players seemed in reasonably fine fettle and no-one’s touch seemed to have completely deserted them. Perhaps playing virtually ten aside helped people preserve energy and (ergo) accuracy with their passing, but the game remained competitive without ever really becoming stretched.

The Blue Bibs took the lead from a speculative effort from Yev that was more akin to wedge shot from a bunker than either a cross or an attempt on goal – his lob came falling out of the night sky, over Andy’s head and into the back of the net.

Alan equalised soon after, taking advantage of some defensive dithering to pass the ball past Goalkeeping Phil to level things up. I believe that Phil (the non-goalkeeping kind) then made it 2-1 to the Yellows following some nice interplay with Alan before the Blues got back on terms following a semi-own goal that pinged off the side of Andy’s head and wrong-footed me in goal.

The Yellows then retook the lead, again through Phil, and the final whistle went. 3-2 to the Yellows.

But wait! What’s that plaintive wailing from the Blues? ‘It might not be eight ‘o’ clock yet’… ‘Come on, we all need the exercise’…’It’s not as if anyone else is coming on after us’…

I was always taught to play to the whistle, but inexplicably this rule was thrown out of the window last week as a cacophony of plangent lowing from the Blues resulted in us agreeing to Keep Playing Football for an indeterminate period of time (or until the Blues scored some more goals, whichever came first).

However, the Blues were thwarted when Liam burst up field with a typically mazy run for the Yellows, and was about to ‘round’ Goalkeeping Phil when the specialist netminder brought him down outside the area.

If playing on after the final whistle wasn’t sufficiently disrespectful to the laws of the beautiful game, the Blues played on following this heinous foul – it was either a free kick or a penalty, as Phil had come outside the area - until my fellow Gooner Ian and I protested loudly enough for play to stop for the award of a free-kick from the spot were young Liam was felled.

From the resulting free kick the ball went out for a corner, (Ian Baggies with the clearance) but Alex scored from the rebound so that the West Brom man’s efforts were in vain.

Final score: 4-2 to the Yellows (aet)

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Other notable incidents include Spizz’s 50:50 challenge with Alex, which ended up with the ageing rocker laying winded on the touchline, Dave hitting the crossbar and the sight of Simon Gas gathering up all the bibs in his bag and then putting them back down again as we agreed to play on.

And so to the Skinners for the first time in 2014, where happily all the Christmas drinkers (Amateurs!) had cleared off. Good to see that no-one is bothering with this dry January nonsense… if you’re going to give up booze for 30 days for God’s sake don’t do it in January, the most miserable month of the entire year.

  a note from the Guv'nor "I was rotated Gashead otherwise I would have come to make the numbers up to twenty. I certainly needed the exercise especially after all the mince pies at Christmas, (there is a specialist bakery in Chase Side near us). Also I think I might need counselling for my pork pie addiction. Especially due to the health issues of certain meat products.

Until next time.