Last Friday night’s game was something of a mixed bag, with plenty of players and plenty of goals. I think that my fellow Gooner Ian had it right when he opined that there were, in fact, two games – one pre-Yev and one post-Yev. The first one finished 3-2 to the Blues and the second one was an 8-1 car crash.
As ever, here are my recollections of both matches.
Teams:
Blues - me, Simon Gas, Alex, Leandro, Stefan, Ian Gooner, Spizz (after Yev’s arrival), Tony, Steve
Yellows – Danny, Dave, Liam, Yev, Alan, Geoff, specialist goalkeeper Phil, Bristol Paul, regular Phil
Mercurial post-punk icon Spizz began the game playing for the Yellows, but upon Yev’s eventual arrival at around 7.25 pm he was switched over to the Blues to prevent the Yellow team from having a two man advantage. The score at this stage of the evening was 3-2 to the Blues; Lord strike me down, but I am struggling to recall the scorers for the Yellows (I know I was in goal when regular Phil rattled the bar and also when he opened the Yellows account via a shot from the right hand side of the goal).
In amongst the goals for the Blues were Alex, unsurprisingly, and Ian, who troubled the score-sheet all evening. Of the three goals he grabbed the first was the best by a country mile; he received the ball some twenty yards out and passed it, Toni Kroos-style, into the top left hand corner leaving even the gifted goalkeeping Phil helpless.
Following the Ukrainian hit-man’s arrival Spizz joined Ian up front in one of the older strike partnerships we’ve seen at Coram Fields (I’m saying that their combined age was positively Rolling Stones-like) and they gorged themselves on the veritable feast of chances supplied by the irresistible midfield triumvirate of Alex, Leandro and Stefan, a young American chap who’d blagged a game by hanging around prior to kick off. Of the eight further goals which were scored Ian got a further two from a combined distance of around 14 inches while Spizz similarly benefitted from the expansive passing game of Leandro, Alex and Stefan. Stefan got two great goals towards the end to cap off a fine performance, while Alex and Leandro were also in amongst it.
At the other end Tony and Simon Gas marshalled the Blues’ defence admirably, although Tony spent at least forty minutes calling me Steve – he must have thought I was being incredibly rude by not even acknowledging his exhortations to drop back and mark the hopeful Yellow players advancing wide on the right.
As the clock wandered inexorably toward eight ‘o’ clock the younger (and considerably) fitter legs of Leandro and Stefan began to mercilessly expose the Yellows’ midfield and Steve joined both Ian and Spizz up front as they queued like pensioners waiting for a bus for the rich pickings coming their way.
8-1, (or 13-3 if you aggregated the two games) it finished.
And so on to the pub, which was fairly busy this week owing to the annual egg-chasing jamboree that blights the late Winter period. Quite a lot to get through here, I don’t mind telling you.
Having managed to grab a large enough table to seat six of us, I found myself explaining the vagaries of London tipping etiquette to an American gentleman who was having what looked like a Lancashire hotpot with his wife. I explained that no, you don’t need to tip in a pub, but that you do in restaurants, taxis and also in hairdressers. Looking over my eyes and up at my pink pate said Yank asked how I’d know (i.e. about the barbers). I said that I had a good memory. Ian then harangued me to go the bar and happily the cheeky Septic had left by the time I got back.
Which brings us on to what is surely the main business of the evening. A conversation about youthful exuberance and sartorial folly ensued, with anecdotes traded about the adoption of ill-advised haircuts, trousers and in some cases, eyeliner (myself included here. You try wearing make-up in Basildon in 1989 and see where you get). One of our number, who hails from a seaside town in the north west – let’s call it ‘Whitepond’, for the sake of argument – who shares a name with an Elton John song – let’s call him ‘Nicky’, as in Nikita, again for the sake of argument – explained that he had, briefly, fronted a New Romantic-styled outfit. If I tell you that they were called ‘Only Joking’, I hope my efforts to anonymise this leading light of the early 80’s musical scene were not in vain.
‘Nicky’ was pressed about how many gigs they’d played and the response was that they had performed on just three occasions, one being a wedding. Using my Sherlock Holmes-like ability to deduce and analyse, I ventured that they had probably only lasted for three gigs because of Girl Trouble, e.g. someone had shagged someone else’s girlfriend. ‘Nicky’ looked momentarily abashed before admitting that he had indeed troubled one of his erstwhile band-member’s woman-folk, but it wasn’t the chap’s girlfriend. It was his mother.
In scenes of near hysteria in the Skinners Arms, ‘Nicky’ denied that this tryst had caused the band’s split, as a) they had gone on to play one more gig after the incident and b) that it had happened with the full knowledge, nay encouragement (!) of said band-member. In a revelation that sounded like something from Motley Cruë’s notorious collective autobiography, ‘Nicky’ explained that his bandmate was a shy lad who hated this step-father. ‘Nicky’ had, on a previous occasion, purchased his bandmate a packet of condoms that had sadly remained unused. When this Lancastrian version of Mrs Robinson beckoned the young ‘Nicky’ to squire her in the lounge of the home she shared with her hapless son ‘Nicky’ recalled that said sheaths were sequestered within a book in his mate’s room and duly donned his prophylactic before fulfilling her son’s hopes that he’d cuckold his step-Dad. Reader, ‘Nicky’ did not tell us that he was Only Joking – this is a true rock ‘n roll story.
All that remains to say is that the evening ended with Ian vainly trying to explain to me the theory of relativity.
Have a good week….
