Football: bloody hell

Another two weeks have slipped by since the last match report(s), chiefly as I was in Cornwall last week for the ancient and annual Furry Dance in Helston, (as well as visiting the outlaws inlaws). The game on the 4^th May was chiefly memorable for a nasty ankle injury to Alex; ten minutes before the end of the game he turned his ankle very painfully and hobbled off with the assistance of Andy and Simon Gas, although such was his contribution that he still finished on the winning side. His ankle had swollen like a ripe fruit by the time our game had finished and Simon ‘Medicine Man’ Gas reckons he’ll be out for around six weeks, making it touch and go whether he’ll be back this side of the Jubilympics. 

Last Friday’s game was a taxing six-aside affair, with the two teams lining up as follows:

Bibs – me, Simon Gas, Yev, Steve A, Danny, Paul,

Colours – Dan, Mick, Cycling Ian, Sam, Joe and Samir Nasri*

(*Not sure what his real name was, but he had the physique and touch of the gifted French turncoat)

If those teams look a little unsided that’s because they were, although Simon and Joe made the somewhat mystifying decision to swap me and Ian Gooner just before kick off, (Ian last seen chugging around Paris on this racer for charity), which had little difference in terms of on-field impact, although a considerable impact on the Tale of the Tape. 

The Colours rattled out a 7-2 scoreline, with the Bibs innovative 3-0-1 formation set to become a footnote in the Chapter in coaching manuals entitled ‘Comedy’. Despite having two excellent defenders in Simon Gas and Danny and the ever-dangerous Yev, the Bibs were clearly lacking in midfield and although Yev grabbed a couple of goals some bashful (and extremely wayward in Steve’s case) finishing meant that the Colours eventually eased away with goals shared almost equally between the six players. Mick provided the midfield platform for Dan to run amok, grabbing two goals including one which was passed into the bottom corner from some distance. Ian was also on the scoresheet, wrong-footing yours truly in goal with a near post finish that rolled back the years. That Parisian air has clearly leant Ian’s play some élan. Nasri’s all round vim and energy was also rewarded with a goal, as he prepared for Sunday’s title decider at the Etihad.

Unlike the 4^th May, where a factional split developed, a bacchanal fissure if you will, between myself, Dan, Andy, Ian and Alan on the one hand and Yev and co on the other, with the former heading to the White Lion and the latter to the Old Fountain’s Head (Simon Gas, ever the diplomat, had a pint in both camps), last Friday saw a reunification of the Players as we all headed to the Old Fountain. The roof terrace is now complete and open, although given that we are never going to get there before 8.00 pm on a Friday the chances of us ever drinking up there are akin to Joey Barton being sent to Syria to broker a peace agreement. 

A word about yesterday’s extraordinary denouement to the end of the Premier League: blimey. City’s title win cannot be good news for anyone other than City fans in the long-run, but there was no denying the drama and sheer heart-thudding excitement of Ageuro’s 95^th minute winner. My highlight of the day was seeing Phil Jones’s gormless and child-unfriendly face crash in disappointment. Schadenfreude indeed.

Colin, The Duchess of Kant

First of all, many apologies for not posting anything for last week’s game, (I had an awfully busy week). For the record, it finished 5-1 to the team in Colours, although the Bibs did take the lead through a rare-as-hen’s-teeth goal from Bristol’s Mr Dependable, Simon Gas. In greasy conditions, Simon’s fierce shot from wide on the left slipped under Danny’s feet in goal. That was as good as it got for the team in Bibs, however – despite Yev being joined by his compadre and fellow Ukrainian, Olympic guest Vitali, he could not find the net, (while Vitali was upended by Alex in a typically English challenge: welcome to Old Street). Alex generally ran riot and bagged a thoroughly deserved hat-trick, aided and abetted by two goals from Steve A. 

This Friday’s game was a seven aside affair, with the teams lining up as follows:

Bibs: me, Dan, Spizz, Yev, Simon Inkpen, Geoff, Sam

Colours: Joe, Alex, Danny, Simon Gas, Andy, Wing-Commander Will, Steve A

The game remained goalless for the first fifteen minutes, but the team in Bibs took the lead following a slightly speculative long-range effort from Yev. Much of the danger from the team in Colours came from an effervescent Joe and a characteristically domineering midfield performance from Alex and it was those two players who linked up most effectively. The Colours equaliser came somewhat fortuitously, with a desperate tackle from myself squirting across the area, past Dan and to an unmarked Joe at the far post who finished unerringly into the corner. The goal which proved to be the winner came from some delightful one-twos between Alex and Joe, with the Joe slipping his marker and fizzing the ball into the far corner.

Despite the attentions of Yev and gout-ridden punk rocker Spizz, the Bibs could not fashion an equaliser, although I managed to miss a chance that a tetraplegic tortoise could have put away, somehow contriving to miss an open goal from about six yards. A day that began with me spilling coffee over my trousers and all over the floor ended just as disappointingly. My misery was compounded by being heckled by the eight ‘o’ clock crew. Bastards.

And so to the pub. We have returned to the Old Fountain’s Head in the past fortnight, although last week’s trip was not one I was overly keen to repeat having been outrageously ignored by Jim at the bar. (This week’s blog is making me sound like a right loser). Last night’s sojourn was an altogether happier experience, chiefly as Yev regaled us with his tales of drunken lechery from the previous weekend when he and the aforementioned Vitali hit the avenues and alleyways of London Town. They ended the weekend in Tiger, Tiger in the Haymarket where both Yev and Vitali were much taken with a waitress named Colin, from Kant. At least that’s what it sounded like on Yev’s telling of the story. On repetition, her name could have been Holly, although whether she deserved the sobriquet of the Duchess of Kant it is impossible to say.

Time gentlemen, please

The final Friday before the Easter break, the first Friday after the clocks went forward. Time, it seems, waits for no man and another football season lurches into its final, convulsive death throes. Still, mustn’t grumble.

Following last week’s na-na-na-na nineteen goal thriller, Simon Gas and Joe returned to action to provide pastoral care and team selection respectively. Joe selected the following two teams –

Bibs – Dan, Simon Gas, Steve A, Andy, Sam, Mick, Danny

Colours – me, Alex, Joe, Ian West Brom, Boro Dave, ringer Hugh (from the Seven ‘O’ Clock collective), Simon Inkpen

Boro Dave, despite looking as if he’d been beamed in from the early 50’s (having forgotten his kit he played with rolled up trousers, although he was sporting appropriate footwear) and Alex formed a potent partnership for the colours and helped the side sans luminous yellow apparel take a seemingly unassailable 4-1 lead, despite the attentions of defensive giants like Danny and Simon Gas. The team in Bibs got back into things after an absolute howler from myself in goals – a speculative centre was prodded toward goal by Dan, whereupon I experienced some sort of goalkeeping neurological meltdown and failed to either stop it with my hands or my body. Terrible stuff. Emboldened, the Bibs got another back a few minutes later after some slack defending. But despite a series of presentable chances falling to Andy and Mick the Bibs couldn’t find an equaliser, while at the other end wave after wave of attacks from the Boro Dave-Alex axis crashed harmlessly onto some resolute defending.

The game started to peter out with play reduced to hopeful balls forward into space and poor passing. Joe sustained a nasty knee injury after clacking patellas with Steve, who seemed largely unaffected. Hopefully nothing serious there.

Final score: Colours 4 Bibs 3

Eschewing the youthful hubbub of the Old Fountain’s Head, the hardy few who made it to the pub instead imbibed at the White Hart, where things seem altogether more old-fashioned, down to the mid-period Springsteen videos on the TV and the fact that they appear to have employed Carol Decker behind the bar. Will they be grateful of the custom? What effect will the new roof terrace at the Fountain have in the future?

Our old friend Time will reveal all....

Holy Toe

After a two week lay off owing to extensive toe-knack I resumed footballing action last Friday evening and was duly asked not only to select the sides, but was also given the responsibility – and what a responsibility – of writing the post-match blog.

With Simon Gas was away watching some Russian theatrics, (my feelings on Russian playwrights are consistent with Withnail’s – old women moaning about ducks going to Moscow), we were shorn of our spiritual leader, but nevertheless enough chaps showed up to make for an enthralling six aside game.

Lining up for the Bibs were me, Dan, Alan, Simon Inkpen, Wing-Commander Will and Ian the exiled Gooner

Playing for the Colours were Boro Dave, Alex, Paul The Guvnor, the late Geoff who was early, Sam and Danny.

There then followed a nineteen goal extravaganza containing great finishing, appalling defending and some very tired legs by the time the rattle went at twenty to eight. The final score was 11-8 to the Colours, although the Bibs had taken an early lead and lead again at 2-1 after Alex had equalised. The scores were reasonably close for the first third of the game, before Boro Dave embarked on an orgy of merciless finishing, the majority of his strikes fizzing off his left foot and nestled snugly in the bottom right hand corner. I think the disparity between the two teams was at least five goals at one stage, with Alex and Boro Dave running riot and various Bibs players failing to track back. One goal Dave scored felt particularly galling, as he nutmegged me around the halfway line and then tore through on goal and slammed the ball past the last vestiges of the Bibs’ defence, leaving the keeper with little chance. I asked Dave how many he’d scored after the game and he said he’d lost count, which tells its own story.

Other notable incidents were a goal Dan scored direct from the restart to make it, I think, 2-2, and a fine poacher’s goal from Alan after I’d robbed Geoff and saw my shot come back off the post via Sam’s fingers.

I managed to bag a late hat-trick to restore a modicum of respectability to proceedings – the first was the best, Dan tapping a free kick sideways whereupon I pushed it high into the top right hand corner. The second was a speculative toe-poke and the third a scruffy finish, but what proved remarkable was that all three goals came from right foot, which was still feeling somewhat tender. Before the game I’d bought a toe protector, labelled ‘Toe Foam’, from Superdrug for the princely sum of £1.99.

Danny opined that said toe foam looked a) like a waste of money and b) like a hindrance. I am inclined to agree, as I had to roll it over twice to fit it onto my already swollen toe and after a few minutes of running around I could feel it unpleasantly squeezing my big toe like an elastoplasted python. Still, you can’t argue with the statistics – all three goals, including the toe-poke, came courtesy of the swaddled digit and I am now faced with the prospect of having to squeeze the tube-like object around my right foot-thumb next week, too. The holy toe foam is here, (above); behold its magnificence as it sits majestically in my back garden.

And so to the pub, for five of us at least. This week’s theme was that people in their twenties don’t know how to behave in a pub; witness two girls at the bar, paying by card (which should be a capital offence), fiddling in the purses for plastic when they should be primed with cash at the moment the barman confirms the tariff of their round; a lad braying to his phone at the bar and getting in Ian’s way, thereby causing him to spill beer; people ordering complicated drinks and not moving away from the bar quickly enough once they’d taken delivery of them.

Next week’s episode of Grumpy Old Men will come to you in association with Ronseal and a quarter of Everton mints.

Hey Porter

I was handed the poisoned chalice of team selection last Friday following the previous week’s mismatch, but it was no easy task. This was due in part to the fact that from a veritable orgy of goal-scoring talent available on the 24th February, Friday March 2^nd saw an altogether more sterile line-up, with Boro Dave being the lone gunslinger on a field of misfiring cowboys. The other factor which made selecting two even teams something of a challenge was that one of our number had prepared for the game by sinking seven pints of Porter – that’s right, Porter - in a bender which had started at around 12.30. Presumably this was 12.30 pm on the 2^nd March 1837. If I tell you that the imbiber of this vat of neo-stout was Ian Gough you will appreciate that the impact this amount of alcohol would have on his performance was difficult to gauge.

As it was, he took to the field slightly late alongside namesake Ian Geary and settled in what would I would probably describe as an outside-left position (left outside the pub, perhaps) and provided the x factor in the eternal equation if

(Beer + football) = x+ Goal

Vomit?

Laudably, Ian did not need to redecorate the side of the pitch with the contents of this stomach, but instead provided a lovely retro cameo which included two goals and a brief spell in goal. He also terrified the two young ringers who were drafted in to make up the numbers – Khaled and young Sam – to the extent that I don’t think they came within a radius of 15 feet of him. It was as if the ghosts of George Best and Garrincha were hovering on the edge of play, swaying giddily in the cold night air and bringing the mischievous spirit of football times past to bear in this brutally modern age.

What of the other goals, I hear you ask? Well, it finished 9-6 to the team that included both Boro Dave, who bagged a two minute hat-trick, part of a four goal haul, and the aforementioned Ian Gough. Making up the numbers were myself, although my contribution was stymied following a 50-50 challenge with Simon ‘Rockfeet’ Gas, who has left my big toe looking like an aubergine, in addition to young Sam, Alex and Danny.

Shamefully, neither myself nor Danny could find the net on an evening when even a man who’d got through seven pints of Porter (who drinks Porter in 2012? Was this some sort of tribute to the bicentennial of Dickens’ birth?) still managed to bag a brace, although Ian’s second was a comedic moment when he drunkenly shied at the ball and the other Ian G in goals cocked his leg up and allowed the ball to trundle underneath and into the unguarded net. Alongside Ian Geary wearing Bibs were Dan, Khaled, Simon Gas, Steve A and Joe, relieved of team selection for the week.

There were few other memorable moments, although all the goal scorers will fondly recall their own contributions. Ian Gough tottered off victorious at the end, although how much he will recall is a moot point.

Just the four chaps made it to the Old Fountain’s Head – me, Simon Gas, Danny and Steve – and once again it was packed to the rafters. I expect that it’s a sign of getting old, but the clientele seem to be getting younger every week, with lots of pretty girls with pixie haircuts and retroussé noses alongside young blades with thrilling facial hair and shoulder bags. What’s wrong with that? Nothing at all, although quite what they’d make of a man who’d quaffed seven pints of Porter and played a game of football is anyone’s guess. Amazeballs, as the young people say.