The Man Who Does The Blog

Hello and Happy New Year, one and all. Here we are in 2019 and back again for another year of huffing and puffing along the Elysian fields of Coram and generally raging against the dying of the light, (or in Tony’s case, just raging). 

Forgive me Father, it has been two months since the last blog, and much has happened.

Reading the last match report back in November it was all about Sebastian; well, the dynamic Colombian continued to torment us all with his incessant step-overs, relentless feinting and outrageous Rabonas right the way up to Christmas, before departing back to South America. James, his cousin, commandeered another member of the family (Thomas) to help swell the numbers and he too proved to be a fine player. Sadly, these two young Latin maestros conformed to every reductive stereotype in their final game together by arriving half an hour late, but the legend of Sebastian has already been set in stone and perhaps he’ll return one day to twist our blood once again.

Speaking of friends from across the seas, the prodigal Viking returned for the final game of 2018 – I speak, of course, of Ross. I had images of him rolling up three stone heavier having spent the six months since we’d last seen him gorging himself on puffin and whale blubber like a Nordic Alan Partridge during the Toblerone years, but no – he looked leaner than ever and was his usual busy self, making thrusting runs and straining with every sinew to score.

At this stage of the blog it might have become apparent that I’m a bit short of match reports.

I’ve managed to find an email from Simon Gas with the following players on (see below) and this reminds me that a pal of Yev’s played in Sebastian’s valedictory performance – name of Khanat – who proved to be very useful. I was introduced to him in the pub as the ‘Man Who Does The Blog’; given the dearth of red hot blog action recently I feel something of a fraud being labelled in this way, but better late than never, eh.

James; “The Colombian”; Thomas (James’s cousin); Danny (going in goal); me; Andy (if he arrives in time from Scotland – I think he did); Joe; Simon Ink; Ian Baggies; Ian Gooner; Yev, Khanat; Liam; Alan; Steve; Simon Gas

My other chief recollection of this game was that Alan accused me of trying to rig the teams so ensure I was on the winning team. It’s like he’d never met me before.

I’ve collated a suite of photos from Simon’s Christmas Pork Pageant (see below), so you can see for yourself who played that night – I have a better recall of this game than some of the others, possibly because of the pictures but probably because of the well-known memory-enhancing properties of pork. 

Simon Gas mucked up the teams by inviting on a ringer, who was obviously very good, which meant that my carefully weighted teams were thrown out of kilter. Despite this, a team comprising me, Geoff, Bert, Danny – based in goal – and some others managed to hold out for about 40 minutes at 1-1 after Steve had opened the scoring with a searing volley before Peter (or was it James?) scored a magnificent equaliser.

I think these were the two teams:

Yellows: Danny Father Christmas in goal, me, Geoff, Pete, Bert, James, Joe, James

Blues: Stu, Steve, Nick, Patrick, Simon Gas, Mr Ringer, Ross, Simon Ink

With about five minutes left Patrick finally made it 2-1 to the Blues before the wheels came well and truly off and the Yellows team shipped about a six more goals in the final few minutes, the majority coming through Patrick, although props should also go to Stu for another barnstorming performance.

Just as well the spread in the pub was so good. (Who knew we were all so photogenic?)

And what will the new year bring? Brexit ? Stuexit (he’s off to Canada next month)? Hopefully a few more blogs than in 2018, but I don’t want to hex it.

Until Friday, comrades.