Of groins and groans…

As the domestic football season draws to a close and we head into the final few weeks of our opening campaign at Coram Fields the weather remains obstinately Spring-like, (which is a nice way of saying it is cool and rainy). Not that the damp weather stymied last Friday’s protagonists from enjoying a ten goal thriller, mind. Simon Gas’s exemplary planning once more saw him unsheathe a fateful piece of paper containing various male first names as he pre-selected the two teams to do battle last Friday. 

They lined up as follows:

Bibs: Alex, Steve, Andy, Liam, Dave, Paul, Ross

Colours: Simon Gas, Dan, Nick, Mark, me, Spizz, Joe (after a switch), Phil

Keeping Dan and Alex apart in an attempt to cancel one another out is always a wise move to make when picking the teams, but unfortunately for the Colours this strategy came somewhat unstuck when Dan came down with a nasty groin knack which meant that he had to play the remainder of the game in goal. At the time the scores were relatively close, but without the Colours’ talisman and all-round most effective player the Bibs started to look ominously dangerous so Simon changed things around, with Joe joining the Colours side.

With their ranks swollen by the addition of Joe, dodgy knee and all, the Colours started to claw their way back from a 4-1 deficit. The Bibs opening salvo had come from the fearsome attacking triumvirate of Alex, Liam and Ross, (none of whom showed any mercy to the crocked Dan in goal). The tide started to turn as Mark fired in from an acute angle to grab one goal back; Joe then managed to keep his composure to pass the ball calmly past Andy for 4-3 and Phil – freed from his usual berth between the posts – grabbed the equaliser after I’d managed to charge down the ball on the edge of the Bibs’ area. 

At 4-4 the game was delicately poised, with Andy stoically repelling the Colours’ shots in goal and Steve marshalling the Bibs’ defence. Likewise, Simon Gas was Beckenbauer-esque at the back for the Colours. Despite a hatful of chances for the Bibs, they failed to get their noses in front and the final score was 6-4 to the Colours. Spizz failed to get on the scoresheet in what will be his final game at Coram Fields this season, or in fact, until around November, but it wasn’t for the a dearth of opportunities; he uncharacteristically failed to take advantage of a couple of one-on-ones (he also played a good through ball for me, but I couldn’t get either myself or the ball around Andy). 

I think that one of Alex or Liam got the winning goal for the Bibs and despite finishing at least eight minutes before eight ‘o’ clock thanks to a combination of gamesmanship from the Colours and an inability to read the time from the clock positioned behind the pitches a late chance for Spizz which sailed harmlessly over the bar was all too indicative of the Bibs’ wastefulness upfront. Sad to say, even if we had utilised the remaining five minutes the final result was unlikely to change. 

And so to the Skinners Arms, where end of season discussion focussed on the weekend’s two big fixtures at Wembley - the Champions League and Play-Off Finals. Simon Gas couldn’t lose on Saturday night having hedged his £20 8-1 bet on Dortmund with a punt on Bayern to win the big pot, (you can see why he works for an august financial institution). Much talk was made of the potential of young Wilfried Zaha who won the penalty which means that Crystal Palace will be plying their trade in next season’s Premier League – I for one think Manchester United have a real talent on their books, despite his rough edges. 

Until Friday, blog readers, until Friday….

A Moral Draw

There are only so many ways you can begin a match report, so I’ll keep this one fairly brief. Last Friday some grown men played football near Russell Square for one hour.

Here’s what happened.

A man called Simon from Bristol picked two teams. One team wore yellow Bibs; one didn’t. The teams were made up of some other people that he has known for varying amounts of time, ranging from over twenty years to a few weeks. Their names are recorded in the following two lines of text:

Colours: Alex, Steve, Paul, Simon Gas, Yev (eventually), Kiwi Nick, Ian West Brom

Bibs: Dan, Matt, Spizz, Dave (following the arrival of Yev), Ian Arsenal, me, bearded Nick

The game got underway. I was in goal. A man on the other side of the fence from our football pitch was smoking a controlled substance, most probably cannabis. If pushed, I’d wager it was skunk weed. It stank to high heaven. This went on for about five minutes; I tried to keep away from the right hand side of the pitch for fear of becoming intoxicated.

The team not wearing Bibs, who shall be referred to henceforth as the ‘Colours’, scored some goals. A man called Alex from Stoke and some other men had the ball more than the team wearing Bibs and they made the team wearing the Bibs look a bit rubbish. The team wearing Bibs seemed more interested in scoring goals than stopping the Colours from scoring goals. This meant that the Bibs scored fewer goals, as the Colours had the ball more often.

Then a man from the Ukraine named Yev arrived. The man from Bristol called Simon decided that his team would have the man called Yev because he is very good at football and Simon likes to win the football matches which he organises. Which seems fair enough. So the Colours gave up one of their players, called Dave, and the Bibs had Yev.

The man smoking drugs had gone by this stage.

The Bibs then decided that if they wanted to score some goals of their own they better stop the other team having the ball so often, so their best two players, Dan and Matt, took charge of the team in midfield and started to create more chances and score some goals. I think that the scores were level for some periods of play; at others one team had scored more than the other. Eventually, the two teams had around seven or eight goals each. But some of the Bibs goals were dubious – one was scored despite a break in play for Nick with the beard to go and retrieve the ball after he’d kicked it over the fence - another one was scored while some of the Bibs were calling for a free kick at their end of the pitch.

Toward the end of the game a man called Spizz, who is a singer in a punk rock band, got very cross with his teammate Dave for the alleged crime of not passing to him often enough. He said that the reason his team were losing was because Dave hadn’t given him the ball, although most people thought Dave had played well and he was unlucky not to score himself, hitting the post twice. The ball made a very sweet noise on both occasions; Dave later used the word “timbre” when describing it.

As the big hand got nearer the number eight, Spizz was cajoled into going in goal. He was not happy about this as he has previously broken his fingers and the Colours scored two goals in quick succession, one when Spizz was kicking the ball from another game back onto the opposite pitch.

At the other end a man called Paul (or ‘Gennaro’, if you’re Ian) went in goal. He might well have been away for two weeks, but he had clearly been in intensive training, as he kept out two or three shots, the most memorable of which was from a header from Matt. Matt had jumped very high in the air to head the ball from a corner, but Paul put two arms out and the ball hit his hands and went over the bar. Lots of people remarked that Matt looked like a long-haired caveman from Newcastle called Andrew when he headed the ball.

I also had a shot which was hurtling into the goal, but Paul pushed that onto the post. The team not wearing Bibs – so, that’s the Colours – had scored 9 goals to the Bibs’ 8, but the man from Bristol declared that it was a “moral draw”. So a moral draw it was.

Lots of the men playing football then went to the pub to drink beer and talk about how famous men from their childhood were, in fact, perverts and criminals and should be locked up forever. But Sid James was not one of them.

This is the end of the match report.

Out of shape...

Another Friday, another game, another deluge of goals, another festival of bad defending, another round of drinks in the pub.

With both the new recruits and those returning from their post-Finsbury Leisure centre sabbatical swelling the ranks once again Simon engineered a lively eight aside to keep us out of the pub for an hour.

From memory, the two teams were as follows:

Bibs: Yev, Simon Ink, Mick, Alex, Geoff, Spizz (!), me, Matt

Colours: Dan, Ian, Simon Gas, Alan, Danny, Andy, Kiwi Nick, Phil

I think it’s fair to say that the Bibs got off to a truly dreadful start, shipping in five goals for just one in reply. Although they were hampered by an injury to Simon Ink’s quad and a lack of goalkeeping gloves the real problem was that no-one was organising the midfield with the all too predictable result that Dan, Nick and Danny eviscerated the Bibs’ defence. Too many Bibs players were caught upfield with too few back defending. So while on paper a team containing such attacking talent as Alex, Yev and the mercurial post-punk legend Spizz should have made life difficult for the opposition, on the pitch there was an absence of shape which meant that Dan, Phil and Danny tucked in like an American tourist at an all you can eat buffet.

Following the fifth Colours goal Yev selflessly decided to drop back and from that point the Bibs became more competitive with Alex and Matt in particular proving a potent attacking force. Spizz was slightly off the pace, as befits someone who hasn’t played for some time, while Geoff beavered away gamely.

The final score was 10-5 to the Colours; although the scores got to 8-4 and 9-5 the final nail in the Bib’s coffin was Spizz reluctantly going in nets and electing not to save the ball owing to a mysterious hand injury which has been seemingly plaguing him since 1976, (Phil being the chief beneficiary). Ian supplied the coup de grace as the cycling colossus deftly finished a sweeping move to get the final goal, just after Alex had bagged the fifth for the Bibs from close range. Ultimately, Danny ensured that the Colours’ lead was well defended by corralling his men behind the ball to close down the options as the Bibs laboured to make telling any breakthroughs.

A bumper crowd at The Skinners this week, as Alex, Matt and Dan all joined the usual hoi polloi. In between Andy checking the play-off score between Yeovil and his beloved Sheff U (sorry, Andy), conversation flittered between the difficulties associated with playing sports with your hands – golf, cricket, rugby, snooker – and likely transfer targets over the Summer, (as well as what a massive tool David Starkey is).

I think it’s fair to say that none of us would have believed that within seven days Manchester United would be looking for a new manager for the first time since 1986. Personally, I have always wondered what Big Ron Atkinson could have done with a Champions League-style budget. What better time to find out?