Thursday, 22 May 2014

Cup fever claims another patient...





Apologies for the delay in posting this report; for reasons which will become apparent, it’s been difficult to cast my mind back to last Friday. Last week saw another great game of football at Coram Fields, with another packed field of players. It must be the Spring weather.

I’m going to have a go at remembering the two teams, more in the hope that it will trigger an avalanche of footballing recall than anything else.

Yellows: Andy, me, Simon Gas, Alex, Steve, Ian Baggies, Nick, Ross, Will

Blues: Alan, Yev, Spizz, David, Mario, Cup Winning Ian, Liam, Danny, Geoff, Simon Ink?

(It was certainly 10 versus 9, at least it was from the point that Yev arrived, but apologies if I’ve incorrectly assigned anyone to the wrong team).

As alluded to in the preceding paragraph, this was a 9 aside affair until Yev arrived, customarily late but uncustomarily with shorts. This gave the Blues the potent looking attacking triumvirate of Liam, Spizz and somewhat less diminutively, Yev. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they outscored the Yellows, although not as comprehensively as one may have thought.

The Yellow team kept an excellent shape at the back and played some highly attractive stuff once they’d got the ball forward, but were perhaps guilty of over-doing it at times, particularly once the Blues had moved into the lead. The Blues did score one of the goals of the game – a delicious cross from Will that saw Ross rise Christ-like into the air to nod the ball back across the face of goal and beyond the keeper. Nick also grabbed a memorable effort, taking the ball down on his chest and firing the ball home from a tight angle with his left peg.

Spizz spent much of the game beseeching Mario to ping 20-30 yard balls into him, a la Steven Gerrard, but he sensibly kept playing short passes down the left where West Brom Ian, Simon Gas and Andy (a veritable defensive tour de force last week) had their work cut out.

As the Yellows legs got heavier the three Blue strikers started to find more space – Spizz set up Liam for one goal that I should have made a better job of intercepting, Spizz took advantage of a couple of defensive howlers to ram home the Blues’ advantage and also scored the penalty which arose from Simon Gas unceremoniously dragging Liam down on top of him. I’m assuming Yev scored at some stage, although my chief memory of his performance last week was him shanking the ball out of play and over the fence on at least one occasion.

Final Score – Blues 6: Yellows 4*
 
* (Possibly)…

A positively balmy night outside (yes, outside) the Skinners, as Ian, Geoff, Spizz, Alan and myself waxed lyrical about Cup Finals past (and Spizz began cyber stalking a young blonde lady who stopped by, somewhat improbably, to talk to Geoff).

Ah, the FA Cup Final. It’s taken me until today to fully recover from the psychic fall-out from that game – three hours of emotional turmoil, anger and ultimately elation that left me little more than a dehydrated husk of a man. If this is what trophy wins do, I can wait another nine years for any more. (I don’t mean that at all).

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