More fun and games to report on this week, as no fewer than
twenty players were slated to do battle at Coram Fields. As luck would have it
Nick withdrew – twenty being plenty, and all that – so we had a slightly more
manageable nineteen people lining up.
Here are your two teams –
Blues: Andy, Paul The Guvnor, Bristol Paul, Simon Ink, Tony,
Mario, David, Patrick, Liam and Eventually Yev
Yellows: me, Ian Baggies, Simon Gas, Aussie Tom, Danny,
Mick, Peter, Joe and Ross
With Yev arriving fashionably late the teams were eight
aside for the first ten minutes or so, but the Yellows could not take advantage
of this temporary equilibrium. With Danny starting in nets for the Yellows they
were slightly weaker than was perhaps first apparent and after conceding their
first goal – David taking advantage of some poor marking to volley home unopposed
from a corner - I went in to relieve Danny. (He likes a bit of relieving, does
Danny).
The Blues thereafter looked the stronger side, with Patrick
and Mario resuming their splendid Big’un and Littl’un partnership and Liam,
Tony and Yev all looking to hoover up any sniff of a chance. But with around
fifteen minutes gone we lost first Tony, who had been theatrically clearing his
throat and complaining about the pollution in the air, and thereafter Ross, for
reasons unknown. Clearly, the dark Satanic mills around Bloomsbury were pumping
the air full of noxious fumes, with esoteric poets and foreign students alike adding
to the toxic atmosphere with their effete intellectual musings and delicately
worded stanzas. Something must be done!
Or perhaps it was just tree pollen?
With Tony collapsing with the black lung and Ross AWOL the
game drifted for around five or ten minutes and it was during this woozy
interregnum that the Blues took a 2-1 lead. However, the Yellows managed to
regroup, spurred on by Mick’s relentless chiding and it was the silver fox
himself who got the Yellows on terms with a sensational finish from wide on the
right, with the ball screaming into the top corner, deceiving the ‘keeper who
was clearly expecting a cross. In fact, it was a trick that he very nearly
repeated later in the game, only for David to claw the ball out from under the
bar.
I had another shot come back of the upright this week as I
turned and span a left footed effort against the post following a delicate
through ball from Mick. As last week’s hat-trick hero Andy cleared the rebound,
the ball came loose again in the same passage of play and I managed to squirt a
square pass to Danny who shot from outside the area. Peter cleverly opened his
knees to let the ball past and with his eight foot seven frame unsighting the
goalie the ball calmly nestled into the goal.
That made it 3-2 to the Yellows and one would have expected
the winning team to hold out, but a storming, slaloming run from Patrick took
the all the Yellow defenders with him and his runner, Yev, to leave Mario
unmarked at the far post to stab home the equaliser.
The one remaining outstanding chance fell to Mick with
literally the last kick of the game, but in attempting to score past David the
chance went begging and it ended up three apiece.
To the Skinners, where discussion this week, at least from
Mick, David, Simon Ink and myself, focussed on the current general election campaign
and the inevitable evisceration of the Labour Party and what hope might remain
for progressive politics after June 8th. In amongst this discussion was debate about how
Diane Abbot reached the giddy heights of the Shadow Cabinet when she clearly
has jam for brains, and what next for this septic isle.
Still, it’ll be Friday soon!
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