Greetings one and all, or should that be Ciao! Friday saw
Coram Fields go very Italianate as we had quattro
calciatori Italiani,which might mean ‘four Italian footballers’. In what
was a reduced field, certainly in comparison to recent weeks, your two teams
lined up thusly:
Yellows (Gialli):
Aussie Tom, Paul of the Antarctic, Mario, Michele, Tony, Mick, Charlie and Liam
Blues (Azzuri?):
Simon Gas, Ian Gooner, Andrea, Roberto, me, Danny, Patrick and Yev
With Yev arriving at just before ten past seven, the Yellow
team were a man short for the first passage of play and deployed a ringer in
goal, a chap called Immanuel, who may well have southern European, too. Despite
the scores being level when Yev arrived there was much wailing and gnashing of
teeth as if I hadn’t properly balanced the two teams, but we stayed at eight
aside until Yev opened the scoring from an acute angle. To be fair, the Yellows
could have been about four or five up by this stage, but Patrick and Yev were
being curiously profligate, with headers going wide and close range efforts
going begging.
With the score at 1-0 to the Yellows the Blue team insisted
on a change and with the Yellows seeing an awful lot of the ball this was
probably the right thing. Cue the return of Immanuel, which sounds like a racy film
title from the 1970’s, who played sweeper-keeper for the Blues for the
remainder of the game. Not that the extra man made much immediate difference,
as the Yellows’ lead stretched with three goals from Patrick; one taking a
straightforward ball over the top and calmly tucking home past the ‘keeper and
another taking advantage of a nicely weighted pass from myself to ram home into
the bottom corner.
Andrea was arguably the man of the match, as his selfless
positioning at the rear of the Yellows’ defence helped his compatriot Roberto
link up with Patrick and Yev in midfield and Danny at left half. Only when he
decided to swap positions with Roberto toward the end of the game did things
start to go awry for the Yellows, as Liam sought to hold up the ball to bring
in Mario, Tony and Charlie.
With around five minutes to go Simon Gas conceded the
Yellows’ first reverse, possibly from Liam. I replaced him in nets and promptly
let in two more – both were chiefly down to the Yellows not having enough players
in defence deep enough and Michele, I believe, pounced to make it 4-2 to the
Yellows. Shortly afterwards Mick found himself free on the right hand side of
the box and fired the ball toward goal; I managed to stop it with my feet but I
was helpless as it squirted to Mario who diligently prodded the ball over the
line from all of about two yards.
With the Yellows teetering they just about managed to hand
on for the win, although I had to punch the ball out for a corner as Mario wound
up for a bicycle kick and the resulting corner came to nought.
Final score: Yellows 4 – Blues 3
No pub for me again, as impending paternity looms large. Simon
Gas explained he’ll be off on his travels again later this month, as he heads to
Vietnam in a few weeks for a Heart of
Darkness piece of reportage, or at least an article about the south east
Asian economy.
I’ll be away for the next fortnight, so in that time please
enjoy the game and be patient with whoever picks the teams.
Arrivederci.
