Waiting for Yev

At the end of another working week we received the early news that Super Mario was feeling anything but super. As he’d taken the bibs the previous Friday this left me with the difficult situation of picking two teams whilst being unable to predict with any degree of accuracy which colours they’d be wearing. 

Happily, the seemingly endless cornucopia of football and non-football ephemera that Coram Fields have in stock – we should try looking for Lord Lucan in their stores; he’d probably be in there sitting astride Shergar – turned up a bag of gaily coloured citrus bibs and the crisis was averted.

But wait! Who’s this coming into the changing room? Why, it’s Professor Alex, wizard of the Potteries. This unheralded arrival prompted Simon Gas to decide to stand down and play in his supersub role. 

However, having lined up the two teams there seemed to be a consensus that the two teams were unbalanced and I duly insisted on Simon Gas swelling the ranks of the Blues team, so that nine played eight. After all that kerfuffle, these were the two teams:

Yellows: me, Peter, Jaime, Danny, Antonio, Charlie, Alex and Steve

Blues (i.e. not Yellows): Ian Gooner, Callum, Joseph, Mick, Patrick, specialist goalkeeper Ed, Vitaly, Tony - and Simon

Despite the misgivings of Tony in particular, the ‘Blues’, clad in a variety of non-citrus colours, proved to be more than a match for the Yellow team and roared into a three goal lead inside ten minutes. Callum managed to nip in front of me to fire past Danny in goal, before Patrick then bagged a brace, the second elegantly steered into the bottom corner from just outside the area. By this stage I had replaced Danny in goal for the Yellows and his introduction began to galvanise the Yellow team and they duly got a goal back via a header from Peter.

Tony had left the field by this stage with a twanged hamstring and so we reverted to eight aside. I felt that the Yellows had enough firepower and guile to go and win the game, but Mick’s ceaseless barking at the back helped marshal the Blues’ defence so despite the Yellows having much of the possession they found it difficult to create clear-cut chances. With specialist goalkeeper Ed also in play the Yellows’ task was that bit harder, although he did let in a howler as the ball ran under his foot and trickled into the net. 3-2 to the Blues.

The Blues had some fairly decent players of their own, however, particularly Callum and young Patrick and they combined to set up Ian Gooner, who pinged home an unerring finish to score the fourth goal for the Blues. Antonio brought the scores back within one goal of parity with a lovely finish on what looked to be his ‘wrong’ foot, but that was good as it got for the Yellows and for all their pleasing interplay and passing moves they ran out of steam.

Final score: Yellows 3 – Blues 4

With the egg chasing on television at the pub space was at a premium, but there was sufficient room for me, Ian and Steve to discuss issues such as the European referendum and the rites of passage for young men wishing to call on father’s daughters, something Steve has had recent experience with. 

We left Vitaly, who didn’t score on the night, but managed to hit the ball so hard he’s bruised my ring finger, awaiting the arrival of Yev, who at 10.00 pm showed no sign of turning up – given his track record for time-keeping I’ve no confidence that he managed to link up with his compatriot before closing time. 

Until next week…