STOP: PRESS The footie game, where Spizz makes an occasional appearance, is moving to
Coram Fields.

The first game looks likely to be on Friday, January 11th, 2013. The pitch looks like it can
accomodate eight-a-side up to ten-a-side.The nearest tube is Russell Square.

The Woman in Black

Welcome then, to the final Blog of 2012, but hopefully not the final one ever given the imminent destruction of the hallowed Astroturf at the Finsbury Leisure Centre. Our final seven aside game didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts with Ross forgetting the Bibs and the ball being left behind on the pitch after last Friday’s game. As Oscar Wilde didn’t say, to lose the ball and the bibs may be unfortunate, but to lose the pitch too is downright careless. Simon Gas should never have gone to Colombia.

With the Bibs being left behind in wherever it is that Ross teaches ‘pop music’ to hormonal teenage girls, I selected two teams of colours for our valedictory match on the doomed pitch. They lined up as follows:

Colours: me, Sam, Ian, Boro Dave, Tom, Simon Ink, Geoff

Bolder colours: Simon Gas, Paul, Joe, Mick, Spizz, Yev, Ross

With fourteen men and no way of differentiating one another (apart from using existential tools like short-term memory and facial recognition), the game was inevitably somewhat harum-scarum at the start, with passes being misplaced even more than usual, (although everyone had a fantastic excuse for kicking the ball to someone other than their intended target). Boro Dave raised a complaint that the number of players in white on either side was confusing given his colour blindness, although as a fellow sufferer I can safely say that this was a red herring. Or maybe a brown trout.

Talking of Dave, (shortly to leave London Town for his native north-east), the man from Middlesbrough opened the scoring. Other scorers on the night included Tom, who has managed to blag a game for the past two weeks (but won’t ever do so again); Spizz, more of whom shortly; and also for the Bolder Colours, Yev, who managed to get what I think was the final goal of the evening and therefore the history of the seven asides at Finsbury Leisure Centre after Ian Gooner in goal kicked it straight out to him.

The final score was, perhaps appropriately, 4-4.

Memories of games and players from the past were never far from the forefront of the mind on an evening that often lurched toward nostalgia, and it was therefore eerily apposite that there was a spectral apparition watching on from the sidelines throughout the game. Somewhat reminiscent of Meryl Streep in the French Lieutenant’s Woman, this figure appeared to be connected to seminal post punk icon Spizz, (to whom this Blog is dedicated). This mystery wrapped up in an enigma, (or was it a pashmina?), as Churchill once described the Soviet Union, was not the ghost of Laurent, nor the personification of one of Tony’s strops, nor even the phantasmagorical embodiment of one of Big Dave’s Celtic war-cries – it was, in fact, Spizz’s “photographer”, (last seen heading toward Camden with some flyers for the Spizzenergi gig atthe Dublin Castle on the 21st December). 

And that, bar a few maudlin pints at the White Lion, is that. Simon Gas will be in touch over the next few weeks to see what people might want to do next, i.e. carry on playing five aside at the Finsbury Leisure Centre, or try to source another seven aside pitch elsewhere in London.

Last word on this week’s Blog goes, however, to a guy named Mitchell Cole. When we were trudging home from the pub last Friday I saw an ambulance parked adjacent to the pitch that we’d been playing on. Tragically, it turns out that the ambulance was there to tend to the former Grays Athletic, Southend United, Stevenage and Oxford United player who had the same condition - hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – as former West Ham and Man City player, Marc Vivien-Foe. Young Mitchell died after collapsing on the pitch. 

For all the doleful thoughts about our Friday night game, this does put things into perspective; perhaps, in the words of David St. Hubbins, too much perspective.

Happy Christmas...

The End is Nigh

As the temperatures plummeted outside and with our spiritual leader still in sunny exile in the Americas we happy few gathered once more to play football at the Finsbury Leisure Centre. I assumed team selection duties and with a motley assortment of gentlemen of various ages fashioned the following two teams

Bibs: Alan, Boro Dave, Dan, Mick, Paul, Simon Ink (hat trick)

Colours: Ian, me, Tom (ringer), Joe, Alex, Ross

With the game underway Paul lived up to his gubernatorial billing and ushered on another chap in the guise of a bloke called Tom to even up the two teams. This had little effect on proceedings apart from restricting our side to ‘stick’ goalie, (we had begun with rush) and given that I had elected to start in nets my toes promptly went numb. The team in Bibs always appeared to be in control and assumed a three goal advantage with Boro Dave and Simon Ink, who went on to grab a hat-trick, among the goals. Big Ian managed to score another long range daisy cutter this week, but it proved an all too rare highlight for the team in Colours who struggled to contain the superior middle passing of the Bibs, with Dan doing much of the damage with plenty of support from Mick and Alan. Too often the Colours struggled to retain possession in the middle of the field, with one stray pass eluding my right foot and resulting in Alan pinging a ball through to the completely unmarked Dave to slot home with studied nonchalance.

Final score: Colours 4 - Bibs 8

Myself, Ian, Mick, Paul, Ross and Simon Ink all repaired to the White Lion where talk touched on a number of topics; Paul, fresh from an eye-wateringly expensive trip to see the Rolling Stones at the 02, brought out his inner Charles Shaar Murray and regaled us with tales of rock’n’roll excess from the 1970’s, including drinking bouts with Gene Hackman and a review of a shambolic Stones gig in Hyde Park.

But all talk was overshadowed by the cripplingly depressing news that next Friday will be the last 7 aside game we play at Finsbury Leisure Centre this year and probably ever. Cliff had received an email saying that after next Friday – i.e. the 7th December – the pitch will be dug up and converted into two 5 aside pitches. Without Simon Gas around to confirm or deny, we had no option but to take this tragic information at face value. Many of the chaps have played here on a Friday night for twenty years or so, certainly dating back into the last century. It is a spirit-crushingly harrowing turn of events, and one necessitated presumably because it will allow Islington Council to make a few more quid from the pitches. Perhaps we should ultimately blame the pressure on local authority budgets (and in turn, the bankers). Perhaps it’s something as simple as a new manager at the centre wanting to ‘maximise income streams’. Who knows.

If anyone is reading this that may not have played recently, this Friday could be the last chance to score a goal or win a game at the FLC. We tentatively agreed to head to the White Lion for the 14th December for a general pow-wow about what to do next and to honour the end of year Christmas festivities; until then, play up and play the game!