Ever since he went bonkers after working at a media multinational, the
Guv'nor (aka Enfield Dataman, Don Quijote de la Mancha and Costacurta to
his mates on the astroturf), Mr Tanner has been keeping a close eye on
the Chase Farm Hospital situation.
Now he is moving up the gears to help
save the A&E department at the North London hospital, which is
earmarked for closure this November 2013.
Any ideas on how to prevent
this, gratefully received.
His new blog (Don Quijote de la Enfield)
looks like it is going to be completely barmy and shows the same signs
of madness of his La Mancha hero.
First of all,
many apologies for the delay in posting this final match report of the
2012/2013 season, a season which saw us move from our historic home of the
Finsbury Leisure Centre to Coram Fields, a location which places us firmly in
the Bloomsbury Set. The tardiness in getting this to you is unforgiveable, but
a combination of work pressures and mid-Summer ennui (Je suis Thierry Ennui)
has left this report unfinished and unwritten. Until now, that is.
The last
Friday night match until September finished 6-3 to the Colours and the two
teams lined up as follows:
Bibs: David,
Steve, Liam (following a swap with Ian Geary), Ross (following Yev’s arrival),
Phil, Paul, Ian Gough, Big Phil,
As you can
see, there was a fair bit of chopping and changing which left some players with
the philosophical trauma of deciding whether they had won or lost – if you
score two goals for the winning team but are shifted onto the opposition midway
through the game, are you both victor and vanquished? – although I think we can
all agree that football was the real winner.
The notes
which I hastily scribbled down after the game record that Yev, Liam and the
Bearded Nick, who Ian seemed intent on goading for reasons unclear to all but
himself, all appeared on the scoresheet. Following his traditional late arrival
Yev’s contribution proved decisive with two (at least) trademark finishes,
including the final goal of the campaign right at the death, as he rounded the
keeper to touch into the empty net. Liam, a sort of Caledonian Lionel Messi,
was in great form for both teams and it took some increasingly desperate
defending from the Colours to fend off a late resurgence from the Bibs. Andy in
particular was immense at the back (and in goal), while Simon Gas rolled back
the years with a classy display that held the Colours’ shape even as they came
increasingly under the proverbial cosh.
One of the
Colours’ goals came after an unholy scramble which saw the ball ping off the
back of a defender and into the path of (I think) Phil, who showed no sign of
nerves and calmly steered past an exasperated Andy and into the far bottom
corner.
Other notable
incidents, at least from my memory, were some fresh air shots from at least two
players (including me), an effort which Dave pushed onto the crossbar (me
again) and a spectacular tumble which saw one of the players fall onto both
knees in the manner of a GI in the film Platoon,
(yep, that’ll be me again). The other outstanding memory of the match was Yev’s
outburst toward the end as the ball careered off onto one of the neighbouring
pitches for the umpteenth time. The group of sullen youths who were
determinedly ignoring our exhortations to return the ball had proved irksome
throughout proceedings, leaving an enraged Yev to declare – very loudly – that
the young lads in question were terribly irritating and that ‘they just stand
there like a [see you next Tuesday]’. Too true.
The end of
season gala dinner dance took place in the curry house next to The Skinners
Arms, somewhat to Simon Gas’ disappointment as he was hoping for a cold buffet
in the pub. I can honestly say that it was the best Indian I’ve been out for in
ages – the food was excellent, the staff were most hospitable (especially the
statuesque Polish waitress who looked somewhat incongruous amongst the
diminutive Bengali men) and the atmosphere was convivial without repeating the
bellicosity of two years ago. Well done, everyone.
And what of
Spizz, I hear you ask? Well, I am pleased to relay a confirmed sighting of the
enigmatic post-punk icon from Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival, where Iggy and the
Stooges played last week at the Festival Hall. Spizz was at the bar – obviously
– without a ticket, (ditto) – and regaled my wife and I with a tale of the last
time Iggy Pop had played at the Festival Hall, in 2008.
Spizz had
joined the Lizard King on stage, whereupon the animated car insurance salesman
had mistaken our Spizz for John Lydon. And so it came to pass that around five
songs into last week’s set Iggy once more exhorted his audience to join him on
stage and in amongst the hundred or so young people pogoing around Iggy was
none other than Spizz, identifiable by his leather jacket, which bears the
legend ‘Spizzenergi’, his trousers which bear the legend ‘Spizzenergi’ and an
LED belt display that transmits the word ‘Spizzenergi’. Ticket or no, Spizz had
got into the gig, reached the stage and started plugging his next gig on the 13thJuly. And then he fell over. Still, that’s rock n roll.
As the domestic football season draws to a close and we head into the
final few weeks of our opening campaign at Coram Fields the weather remains
obstinately Spring-like, (which is a nice way of saying it is cool and rainy). Not
that the damp weather stymied last Friday’s protagonists from enjoying a ten
goal thriller, mind. Simon Gas’s exemplary planning once more saw him unsheathe
a fateful piece of paper containing various male first names as he pre-selected
the two teams to do battle last Friday.
They lined up as follows:
Bibs: Alex, Steve, Andy, Liam, Dave, Paul, Ross
Colours: Simon Gas, Dan, Nick, Mark, me, Spizz, Joe (after a switch),
Phil
Keeping Dan and Alex apart in an attempt to cancel one another out is
always a wise move to make when picking the teams, but unfortunately for the
Colours this strategy came somewhat unstuck when Dan came down with a nasty
groin knack which meant that he had to play the remainder of the game in goal.
At the time the scores were relatively close, but without the Colours’ talisman
and all-round most effective player the Bibs started to look ominously
dangerous so Simon changed things around, with Joe joining the Colours side.
With their ranks swollen by the addition of Joe, dodgy knee and all, the
Colours started to claw their way back from a 4-1 deficit. The Bibs opening
salvo had come from the fearsome attacking triumvirate of Alex, Liam and Ross, (none
of whom showed any mercy to the crocked Dan in goal). The tide started to turn
as Mark fired in from an acute angle to grab one goal back; Joe then managed to
keep his composure to pass the ball calmly past Andy for 4-3 and Phil – freed
from his usual berth between the posts – grabbed the equaliser after I’d
managed to charge down the ball on the edge of the Bibs’ area.
At 4-4 the game was delicately poised, with Andy stoically repelling the
Colours’ shots in goal and Steve marshalling the Bibs’ defence. Likewise, Simon
Gas was Beckenbauer-esque at the back for the Colours. Despite a hatful of chances
for the Bibs, they failed to get their noses in front and the final score was
6-4 to the Colours. Spizz failed to get on the scoresheet in what will be his
final game at Coram Fields this season, or in fact, until around November, but
it wasn’t for the a dearth of opportunities; he uncharacteristically failed to
take advantage of a couple of one-on-ones (he also played a good through ball
for me, but I couldn’t get either myself or the ball around Andy).
I think that one of Alex or Liam got the winning goal for the Bibs and
despite finishing at least eight minutes before eight ‘o’ clock thanks to a
combination of gamesmanship from the Colours and an inability to read the time
from the clock positioned behind the pitches a late chance for Spizz which sailed
harmlessly over the bar was all too indicative of the Bibs’ wastefulness
upfront. Sad to say, even if we had utilised the remaining five minutes the
final result was unlikely to change.
And so to the Skinners Arms, where end of season discussion focussed on
the weekend’s two big fixtures at Wembley - the Champions League and Play-Off
Finals. Simon Gas couldn’t lose on Saturday night having hedged his £20 8-1 bet
on Dortmund
with a punt on Bayern to win the big pot, (you can see why he works for an
august financial institution). Much talk was made of the potential of young
Wilfried Zaha who won the penalty which means that Crystal Palace
will be plying their trade in next season’s Premier League – I for one think
Manchester United have a real talent on their books, despite his rough edges.
There are only so many ways
you can begin a match report, so I’ll keep this one fairly brief. Last Friday
some grown men played football near Russell
Square for one hour.
Here’s what happened.
A man called Simon from Bristol picked two teams.
One team wore yellow Bibs; one didn’t. The teams were made up of some other
people that he has known for varying amounts of time, ranging from over twenty
years to a few weeks. Their names are recorded in the following two lines of
text:
Colours: Alex, Steve, Paul,
Simon Gas, Yev (eventually), Kiwi Nick, Ian West Brom
Bibs: Dan, Matt, Spizz, Dave
(following the arrival of Yev), Ian Arsenal, me, bearded Nick
The game got underway. I was
in goal. A man on the other side of the fence from our football pitch was
smoking a controlled substance, most probably cannabis. If pushed, I’d wager it
was skunk weed. It stank to high heaven. This went on for about five minutes; I
tried to keep away from the right hand side of the pitch for fear of becoming
intoxicated.
The team not wearing Bibs,
who shall be referred to henceforth as the ‘Colours’, scored some goals. A man
called Alex from Stoke and some other men had the ball more than the team
wearing Bibs and they made the team wearing the Bibs look a bit rubbish. The
team wearing Bibs seemed more interested in scoring goals than stopping the
Colours from scoring goals. This meant that the Bibs scored fewer goals, as the
Colours had the ball more often.
Then a man from the Ukraine named
Yev arrived. The man from Bristol
called Simon decided that his team would have the man called Yev because he is
very good at football and Simon likes to win the football matches which he organises.
Which seems fair enough. So the Colours gave up one of their players, called
Dave, and the Bibs had Yev.
The man smoking drugs had
gone by this stage.
The Bibs then decided that
if they wanted to score some goals of their own they better stop the other team
having the ball so often, so their best two players, Dan and Matt, took charge
of the team in midfield and started to create more chances and score some
goals. I think that the scores were level for some periods of play; at others
one team had scored more than the other. Eventually, the two teams had around
seven or eight goals each. But some of the Bibs goals were dubious – one was
scored despite a break in play for Nick with the beard to go and retrieve the
ball after he’d kicked it over the fence - another one was scored while some of
the Bibs were calling for a free kick at their end of the pitch.
Toward the end of the game a
man called Spizz, who is a singer in a punk rock band, got very cross with his
teammate Dave for the alleged crime of not passing to him often enough. He said
that the reason his team were losing was because Dave hadn’t given him the
ball, although most people thought Dave had played well and he was unlucky not
to score himself, hitting the post twice. The ball made a very sweet noise on
both occasions; Dave later used the word “timbre” when describing it.
As the big hand got nearer
the number eight, Spizz was cajoled into going in goal. He was not happy about
this as he has previously broken his fingers and the Colours scored two goals
in quick succession, one when Spizz was kicking the ball from another game back
onto the opposite pitch.
At the other end a man
called Paul (or ‘Gennaro’, if you’re Ian) went in goal. He might well have been
away for two weeks, but he had clearly been in intensive training, as he kept
out two or three shots, the most memorable of which was from a header from
Matt. Matt had jumped very high in the air to head the ball from a corner, but
Paul put two arms out and the ball hit his hands and went over the bar. Lots of
people remarked that Matt looked like a long-haired caveman from Newcastle called Andrew
when he headed the ball.
I also had a shot which was
hurtling into the goal, but Paul pushed that onto the post. The team not
wearing Bibs – so, that’s the Colours – had scored 9 goals to the Bibs’ 8, but
the man from Bristol
declared that it was a “moral draw”. So a moral draw it was.
Lots of the men playing
football then went to the pub to drink beer and talk about how famous men from
their childhood were, in fact, perverts and criminals and should be locked up
forever. But Sid James was not one of them.
Another Friday, another
game, another deluge of goals, another festival of bad defending, another round
of drinks in the pub.
With both the new recruits
and those returning from their post-Finsbury Leisure centre sabbatical swelling
the ranks once again Simon engineered a lively eight aside to keep us out of
the pub for an hour.
From memory, the two teams
were as follows:
Bibs: Yev, Simon Ink, Mick,
Alex, Geoff, Spizz (!), me, Matt
Colours: Dan, Ian, Simon
Gas, Alan, Danny, Andy, Kiwi Nick, Phil
I think it’s fair to say
that the Bibs got off to a truly dreadful start, shipping in five goals for
just one in reply. Although they were hampered by an injury to Simon Ink’s quad
and a lack of goalkeeping gloves the real problem was that no-one was
organising the midfield with the all too predictable result that Dan, Nick and
Danny eviscerated the Bibs’ defence. Too many Bibs players were caught upfield
with too few back defending. So while on paper a team containing such attacking
talent as Alex, Yev and the mercurial post-punk legend Spizz should have made
life difficult for the opposition, on the pitch there was an absence of shape which
meant that Dan, Phil and Danny tucked in like an American tourist at an all you
can eat buffet.
Following the fifth Colours goal
Yev selflessly decided to drop back and from that point the Bibs became more
competitive with Alex and Matt in particular proving a potent attacking force.
Spizz was slightly off the pace, as befits someone who hasn’t played for some
time, while Geoff beavered away gamely.
The final score was 10-5 to
the Colours; although the scores got to 8-4 and 9-5 the final nail in the Bib’s
coffin was Spizz reluctantly going in nets and electing not to save the ball
owing to a mysterious hand injury which has been seemingly plaguing him since
1976, (Phil being the chief beneficiary). Ian supplied the coup de grace as the
cycling colossus deftly finished a sweeping move to get the final goal, just
after Alex had bagged the fifth for the Bibs from close range. Ultimately,
Danny ensured that the Colours’ lead was well defended by corralling his men
behind the ball to close down the options as the Bibs laboured to make telling
any breakthroughs.
A bumper crowd at The
Skinners this week, as Alex, Matt and Dan all joined the usual hoi polloi. In
between Andy checking the play-off score between Yeovil and his beloved Sheff U
(sorry, Andy), conversation flittered between the difficulties associated with
playing sports with your hands – golf, cricket, rugby, snooker – and likely
transfer targets over the Summer, (as well as what a massive tool David Starkey
is).
I think it’s fair to say
that none of us would have believed that within seven days Manchester United
would be looking for a new manager for the first time since 1986. Personally, I
have always wondered what Big Ron Atkinson could have done with a Champions
League-style budget. What better time to find out?
And so it
came to pass that with the changing of the kick off time from 8.00 pm to 7.00
pm a cavalry charge of young knights galloped in from across the nation’s
capital to rescue the Coram Field Collective from endless games of five or six
aside that ended up hopelessly one-sided with players purple-faced from the
lung-bursting effort required to cover the wide expanses of the far pitch.
Simon Gas’s
clarion call for New Recruits was met with an eager scampering of young men,
slick with excitement and joie de vivre like footballing foals covered in equine
afterbirth, only with beards and leather boots. Some, like Alex and Dan, were
Old Street Originals - albeit players who had been out of circulation since the
switch to Russell Square.
Others had not played with us before: there was a Kiwi gentleman named Nick, a
friend of mine called David, (or ‘Dave’, in the easy camaraderie of the
football pitch) and a serious young man named Phil, who is apparently a friend
of Ross’s.
With Wing
Commander Will, Joe and Ross all absent with knee injuries the New Recruits
were particularly welcome and ensured that we enjoyed what was comfortably the
best match I’ve been involved with at Coram Fields.
The two teams
lined us thusly:
Bibs: Ian
West Brom, Ian Arsenal, me, Dave, Dan, Danny, Yev
Colours:
Nick, Kiwi Nick, Simon Gas, Simon Ink, Phil, Alex, Steve A
Playing on
the unfamiliar and disconcertingly visible middle pitch, the game kicked off
and was dominated by the Colours in the early exchanges. While the new players
tentatively probed and prodded, the Bibs’ key man – Alex - demonstrated that his
mid-season sojourn had done nothing to blunt either his fitness or skill levels
and the man from the Potteries duly set about running the Bibs’ back line
ragged, with both Nicks benefitting from his expert through balls and all round
vim. The Colours roared into a 5-0 lead, with the Bibs struggling to commit
enough men forward and to win the ball in midfield. I took a spell in nets and promptly
let in a couple; on both occasions my inner spirit level left something to be desired
as I tried to make myself big in goal only to leave waste swathes of the goal
unguarded. Alex and Nick tucked in.
Gradually,
however, Dan and Yev started to forage further and further forward into the
Colours half and with the aid of Danny started to test the opposition defence.
Unfortunately for the Bibs young Phil turned out to be that rarest of beasts: a
specialist goalkeeper (certainly, he demonstrated no intention of coming out of
nets) and time and time again he repelled what looked like goalbound shots with a
display reminiscent of Viz’s Billy the Fish. Dan and Yev managed to get a
couple of goals back, but keeping the Bibs out at the other end was proving
trickier, as the mobility and speed of the Alex - Kiwi Nick - Nick axis found
the gaps, despite increasingly desperate efforts to prevent further mayhem.
The final
score was 8-4 to the Colours, although the second half of the game felt far
more competitive and at one stage the Bibs got two or three in succession to
provoke hopes/fears of an almighty comeback, only for the Colours to engineer a
move down the right which culminated in Kiwi Nick coming in at the back post to
seal the win. I managed to score with the final kick of the game after the
previously excellent Phil had miskicked and given me the chance to pass the
ball home from all of 12 yards.
There were good
debuts from all of the new players; Dave was guilty of a cheeky handball which
most of the opposition seemed to miss and which augurs well for future
arguments. On a similar note, it was nice to see that Steve’s chutzpah hasn’t waned
– he called for a kick-in for his team after unceremoniously hoofing the ball
off the pitch as I attempted to get it under control.
Pints of
Trelawny all round at the Skinners Arms this week, at least for me, Ian and
Simon Ink. Discussion veered between the merits of the earlier kick off time,
how differing police tactics between the UK and Russia might explain the
renaissance in football violence in recent weeks (Yev cheerfully opined that
the Millwall hooligans at Wembley the other week would have been shot had they
pulled that stunt in the former Soviet Union) and onto the emerging Teutonic
dominance of the continent’s leading club football competition.
As we kicked off for the final time this season at 8.00 pm thoughts
inevitably began to turn toward the Summer: barbeques, lovely cricket, cold
beer outside the pub and for Arsenal fans, a tense wait to see which key
players will move to Manchester. For Simon Gas however, a Ferguson-like captain
of advance planning, thoughts did not move further ahead than picking the teams
for last Friday’s match.
Interestingly, having missed a week owing to a dearth of
players, Simon had picked not one but two sets of teams to play thirty minutes
each. Alan, on being told of this news, momentarily looked as if someone had
told him that the Earth was made of Toblerone, but put aside his shock to point
out that Simon had picked virtually the same four teams, with just him and
Steve A swapping positions. This idea
was duly abandoned.
With the playing staff decimated with injury – Geoff was
absent owing to a horological condition which meant that he’d arrived in a
different time zone, Wing Commander Will was out with a fractured moustache and
Joe missed the game due to a rare bout of Porphyria – the teams lined us
thusly:
Bibs: Ian West Brom, Alan, Paul, Mick, Steve
Colours: Ian Arsenal, Simon Gas, Ross, Danny, me
For the first time since I have been playing at Coram Fields
the game finished with just one goal in it; the odd goal in seventeen, as it
happened. At half-time the Bibs were ahead by two goals and looked set to go on
and win comfortably, with Alan getting in amongst them (annoyingly, one was
scored by nutmegging me as I rushed out of goal in an attempt to close down angles).
At this stage in proceedings the Colours lacked a bit of shape and kept giving
away possession while struggling to make enough chances. Just before the break
the Colours pulled two back, one from Ross via a through ball from myself and
another which was the other way around.
In the second half the Colours managed to play the ball
around with greater awareness of one another and with Ross and Danny’s legs on
board they gradually came back into things, with Danny getting a breakaway goal
and myself scoring one past Paul.
In the end, despite an excellent save from Paul to deny me a
hat-trick, Simon Gas got the winner with a drilled right footed finish almost
on full-time. This was his second goal of the match, his opening effort coming in
the first half when he took aim from some around 15 yards out, saw the ball rise up
in the air, (upon which he emitted a weary groan) only for the ball to fall
like a leaf into the top corner. Over head, yet under the bar, a new rule was
formed. By Simon. Who organises the game. And that’s just how it is.
And so to The Skinners where we got a large enough table for
all of us who made it there. Ian Arsenal left a little earlier than usual owing
to the fact he’d enjoyed some light refreshment in the afternoon, while discussion
included some unashamed nostalgia for The Big Match complete with Brian Moore’s
combover and snow-bound pitches and a discussion as to who the best players
have been in The Premiership era not to play for your team. Cantona and
Bergkamp both featured prominently.
My main problem is that Gashead won't give me a discount for my various disabilities mental and physical. I have got a pin in my leg and have lost
twenty yards of pace.
On a normal match fee of six pounds, I should pay just three quid. I need to work on my pace though since I am so slow. My local footie team is Barnet.
