Bib-bib, n’ bib-bib, yeah!

Greetings, Spizzenergi football blog readers. Another good workout this week, with the numbers of players just about stretching to seven aside, meaning there was lots of running, huffing and puffing. Simon Gas’s two teams, sans bibs, (the north London auteur Tony being the culprit who forgot to bring them), were as follows:

‘Darks’ (red, black, navy): me, Ian Arsenal, Chris, Tony, Dave, Phil, Will

‘Lights’ (white, light blue, yellow): Spizz, Mick, Liam, Simon Gas, Mario, Paul, Danny

And so we began, with both teams wearing a mixture of kit that broadly fell into either the categories ‘light’ or ‘dark’. There was some early confusion with Simon Gas wearing a dark blue t-shirt that had to be swapped with Phil via Danny, which saw the Bristol Rovers supremo playing in a fetching white vest that was reminiscent of a) a primary school PE lesson or b) a scene from a Louisiana strip joint (you choose).

It may have been a consequence of the confusion over colour, but there was a testy exchange between Mick and post punk legend Spizz, the gist of which was that Mick felt that Spizz was up front hogging the limelight while his team-mates were left doing too much of the legwork. Sport imitating art imitating life, no doubt.

Partly aided and abetted by the general confusion over team strips, the Lights roared into a three goal lead courtesy of goals from the aforementioned Spizz, who spotted Dave slightly wrong-footed on his line and then Mario, to whom I am almost obliged to add the prefix ‘Super’ and finally Danny. Mario’s goal in particular was an excellent shot; the barrel chested newcomer opened his body and sent the ball wide outside the ‘keeper (me in this instance) before it bent back into the far post.

At this point the Darks’ eyes adjusted to the early Spring gloom and they began to get themselves organised. I was being directed, nay commanded, around by (who else?) Tony, but the combination of West Ham Chris, another newcomer, at left half and Tony in midfield began to pay dividends as we got danger man Will increasingly into the game.

With Will and Phil getting in amongst the goals, the deficit began to reduce, although a slightly flukey goal from Spizz that went in off a defender’s heel proved, ultimately, to be the winner. There was just the one goal in it by the end, as Ian collected the ball from a distance of all of three yards, gave Simon Gas the eyes and pushed it inside the near post for the final goal of the night.

Final score: Darks 5 Lights 6

Hopefully we’ll have the Bibs back next week, as well as some more players.

And so once more to the pub. A rare treat this week, as we managed to grab a table and chairs from the off, leaving no man splintered off from the main group. The most memorable conversation revolved around the somewhat unlikely topic of climbing mountains; Danny regaled us with a tale involving his wife and the folly of climbing the Old Man of Conniston in jeans and t-shirts without any supplies or equipment and hailing some truculent mountaineers for help; Mick and Ian both had similar stories of unforgiving hillocks and woefully under-prepared outdoors enthusiasts.

When was the last time you heard words like ‘tarn’, ‘corrie’ and ‘scree’? GCSE Geography? Not in a west end boozer, I’d wager.

Yours geographically….

Springtime for Simon and Stefan

I fully intended to make up for the absence of last week’s blog – blame a week from hell, including the contraction of a nasty computer virus that left me wandering my office like David Banner without a friendly PC to use – by posting a bumper double edition on Sunday, but a friend’s 40^th birthday spiralled out of control and I lost the whole day to the kind of hangover I thought I’d left behind in the early years of the century. (This is what happens when my wife goes away).

As such, I am penning this on the other side of a weekend which saw Arsenal earn a Wembley appearance for the first time since the Birmingham City debacle of 2011 and resulted in me singing loudly in the residential streets surrounding my house at one in the morning.

First things first, February 28^th’s game, which I am labelling the Final Game of Winter, was a very busy affair, with both teams boasting around ten aside. With so many players on the pitch space was at an absolute premium, particularly in central midfield, and it took the faster feet and legs of players like Alex, Leandro, making his valedictory appearance at Coram Fields just as everyone had learnt his name, and a young American lad called Stefan to make the difference. I forget the colour of the bibs worn by the winning team, but one side ran out comfortable winners by a margin of around 10-2, with Will, Leandro, Alex and Stefan all impressing. Less impressive was Bearded Nick, who was lambasting all and sundry on his team, (including the Arthur Daley of New Wave, Spizz), although he did have the good grace to admit as much the following week.

That’s about all I can remember from the last game in February, which was played in the pouring rain and high winds that have made the past few months such a bleedin’ misery. Fast forward seven days and the contrast couldn’t have been any starker: from chill winds to a balmy evening inside one week, with not a drop of rain to be seen.

Happily, there were far fewer players on the park, making the game altogether more enjoyable and leaving one feeling as if you had a good work-out. Simon Gas picked the following two sides:

Yellows - me, Steve, Danny, Simon Ink, Stefan, Mick, Geoff

Blues - Simon Gas, Alan, Tony, Bristol Paul, Paul, Will, Bearded Nick

The Yellows roared into a three goal lead following scoring efforts from Stefan and a tremendous third goal from Simon Ink that saw the Yellows leading 4-1. The ‘1’ for the Blues was a spectacular looking finish from Alan, who was seemingly channelling African colossi like Didier Drogba and Emmanuel Adebayor when he received the ball on his chest with his back to goal before turning and smashing a volley in off the left post. At this point Simon Gas, never a man to accept defeat when it is still possible to engineer victory, switched the teams, apparently because Bristol Paul was carrying a knock. (This was by no means obvious as the West Countryman roamed forward from his left back berth with characteristic menace, but I suppose we will have to accept this alleged truth).

The revised line-ups looked like this: -

Yellows - me, Steve, Danny, Paul, Stefan, Mick, Geoff

Blues - Simon Gas, Alan, Tony, Bristol Paul, Simon Ink, Will, Bearded Nick

Shorn of our Olivier Giroud-like focal point the Yellows came under increasing pressure and a slew of goals from Tony and Will saw the Blues draw level. The final passage of the game was a desperate slug-fest to see who could get a winner – the Yellows’ goal lead something of a charmed life, although Steve and Danny marshalled the defence admirably, while Stefan missed a glorious one-on-one with Tony in goal, the north London auteur out-psyching the Kentucky tyro and forcing him too wide to get a decent shot off.

With the time creeping past eight ‘o’ clock Tony called the game off, saying he had to ‘be somewhere’. Simon Gas complied (speculation is mounting that Tony has a shoe-box full of polaroids of the younger Simon in compromising positions, (and we’re not talking about his place on the pitch)) and four apiece it ended, which was arguably the fairest result on the night.

It transpired that the place Tony needed to be was the Skinners Arms, where he was reclined with paper upon the arrival of the rest of us. After learning that young Stefan could have been out with his mates drinking in riverside locations but preferred to company of middle-aged men, talk turned to the remainder of the domestic football season and the weekend’s fixtures.

That’s it ‘til Friday – enjoy your week and I promise not to leave it so late next week.

E = MC2

Last Friday night’s game was something of a mixed bag, with plenty of players and plenty of goals. I think that my fellow Gooner Ian had it right when he opined that there were, in fact, two games – one pre-Yev and one post-Yev. The first one finished 3-2 to the Blues and the second one was an 8-1 car crash.

As ever, here are my recollections of both matches.

Teams:

Blues - me, Simon Gas, Alex, Leandro, Stefan, Ian Gooner, Spizz (after Yev’s arrival), Tony, Steve

Yellows – Danny, Dave, Liam, Yev, Alan, Geoff, specialist goalkeeper Phil, Bristol Paul, regular Phil

Mercurial post-punk icon Spizz began the game playing for the Yellows, but upon Yev’s eventual arrival at around 7.25 pm he was switched over to the Blues to prevent the Yellow team from having a two man advantage. The score at this stage of the evening was 3-2 to the Blues; Lord strike me down, but I am struggling to recall the scorers for the Yellows (I know I was in goal when regular Phil rattled the bar and also when he opened the Yellows account via a shot from the right hand side of the goal).

In amongst the goals for the Blues were Alex, unsurprisingly, and Ian, who troubled the score-sheet all evening. Of the three goals he grabbed the first was the best by a country mile; he received the ball some twenty yards out and passed it, Toni Kroos-style, into the top left hand corner leaving even the gifted goalkeeping Phil helpless.

Following the Ukrainian hit-man’s arrival Spizz joined Ian up front in one of the older strike partnerships we’ve seen at Coram Fields (I’m saying that their combined age was positively Rolling Stones-like) and they gorged themselves on the veritable feast of chances supplied by the irresistible midfield triumvirate of Alex, Leandro and Stefan, a young American chap who’d blagged a game by hanging around prior to kick off. Of the eight further goals which were scored Ian got a further two from a combined distance of around 14 inches while Spizz similarly benefitted from the expansive passing game of Leandro, Alex and Stefan. Stefan got two great goals towards the end to cap off a fine performance, while Alex and Leandro were also in amongst it.

At the other end Tony and Simon Gas marshalled the Blues’ defence admirably, although Tony spent at least forty minutes calling me Steve – he must have thought I was being incredibly rude by not even acknowledging his exhortations to drop back and mark the hopeful Yellow players advancing wide on the right.

As the clock wandered inexorably toward eight ‘o’ clock the younger (and considerably) fitter legs of Leandro and Stefan began to mercilessly expose the Yellows’ midfield and Steve joined both Ian and Spizz up front as they queued like pensioners waiting for a bus for the rich pickings coming their way.

 8-1, (or 13-3 if you aggregated the two games) it finished.

And so on to the pub, which was fairly busy this week owing to the annual egg-chasing jamboree that blights the late Winter period. Quite a lot to get through here, I don’t mind telling you.

Having managed to grab a large enough table to seat six of us, I found myself explaining the vagaries of London tipping etiquette to an American gentleman who was having what looked like a Lancashire hotpot with his wife. I explained that no, you don’t need to tip in a pub, but that you do in restaurants, taxis and also in hairdressers. Looking over my eyes and up at my pink pate said Yank asked how I’d know (i.e. about the barbers). I said that I had a good memory. Ian then harangued me to go the bar and happily the cheeky Septic had left by the time I got back.

Which brings us on to what is surely the main business of the evening. A conversation about youthful exuberance and sartorial folly ensued, with anecdotes traded about the adoption of ill-advised haircuts, trousers and in some cases, eyeliner (myself included here. You try wearing make-up in Basildon in 1989 and see where you get). One of our number, who hails from a seaside town in the north west – let’s call it ‘Whitepond’, for the sake of argument – who shares a name with an Elton John song – let’s call him ‘Nicky’, as in Nikita, again for the sake of argument – explained that he had, briefly, fronted a New Romantic-styled outfit. If I tell you that they were called ‘Only Joking’, I hope my efforts to anonymise this leading light of the early 80’s musical scene were not in vain.

‘Nicky’ was pressed about how many gigs they’d played and the response was that they had performed on just three occasions, one being a wedding. Using my Sherlock Holmes-like ability to deduce and analyse, I ventured that they had probably only lasted for three gigs because of Girl Trouble, e.g. someone had shagged someone else’s girlfriend. ‘Nicky’ looked momentarily abashed before admitting that he had indeed troubled one of his erstwhile band-member’s woman-folk, but it wasn’t the chap’s girlfriend. It was his mother.

In scenes of near hysteria in the Skinners Arms, ‘Nicky’ denied that this tryst had caused the band’s split, as a) they had gone on to play one more gig after the incident and b) that it had happened with the full knowledge, nay encouragement (!) of said band-member. In a revelation that sounded like something from Motley Cruë’s notorious collective autobiography, ‘Nicky’ explained that his bandmate was a shy lad who hated this step-father. ‘Nicky’ had, on a previous occasion, purchased his bandmate a packet of condoms that had sadly remained unused. When this Lancastrian version of Mrs Robinson beckoned the young ‘Nicky’ to squire her in the lounge of the home she shared with her hapless son ‘Nicky’ recalled that said sheaths were sequestered within a book in his mate’s room and duly donned his prophylactic before fulfilling her son’s hopes that he’d cuckold his step-Dad. Reader, ‘Nicky’ did not tell us that he was Only Joking – this is a true rock ‘n roll story.

All that remains to say is that the evening ended with Ian vainly trying to explain to me the theory of relativity.

Have a good week….

Phil the (wind)force

A rare midweek day off brings a chance to post this match report from the comfort of my own home with the afternoon stretched out before me like a cat basking on a Summer’s day. Let’s see how quickly I can do this, with all the distractions working from home brings.

Last week’s game was a blustery affair, coming as it did amongst some of the most abominably dreadful weather I can remember. The relentlessness of the grey skies and their concomitant downpours even managed to put off some of the Friday night football fraternity; Will, creative midfield metronome, texted Simon Gas late in the day to say, basically, he didn’t fancy it because of the weather. And these northerners are supposed to be made of tough stuff...

Simon Gas’s two sides lined up as thus:

Yellows – me, Alex, Danny, goalkeeping Phil, regular Phil, Simon Gas, Danny, Simon Ink

Blues – Leandro / Alessandro / Alejandro, Spizz, Liam, Mark, Paul, Steve, Bristol Paul, Tony

The more mathematically minded of you will have spotted that the Blues had a man advantage, although the Yellow team had the considerable plus point of having specialist goalkeeper Phil in nets, at least for the majority of the game.

With the rain temporarily halted but the wind still blowing a literal and metaphorical gale, the Yellows took the lead through (I think) Phil and were managing to retain both possession and a modicum of shape in the early exchanges. However, the Blues had a strong midfield with Tony, Liam and Leandro, who would appear to be a man who is known by many names (Alessandro, Alejandro, (Fernando?) and got the score back to 1-1 before taking the lead. The Yellows then restored parity via a veritable tour de force from Alex, who ran the length of the pitch evading multiple challenges before slamming the ball home inside the far post. ‘Fuck me, he’s good’, opined Liam. He ain’t wrong.

I’ll attempt, heroically as always, to name all the scorers. Spizz had got the first goal for the Blues; Liam bagged the second, volleying in a speculative cross that wasn’t properly dealt with by the Yellows’ defence. With the scores level at two apiece the Blues extra man began to tell, as Bristol Paul patrolled the left flank menacingly and brought the ball forward to play one of Liam, Steve or Tony. 

Eventually the Blues got a fourth and fifth goal – by this stage specialist goalkeeper Phil had been replaced in nets by regular Phil and although he managed to parry one effort with impressive reflexes, a gust of wind took the rebound too far away from him leaving Mark with the simplest of tap-ins. The Blues did get another goal back to make 5-3 before Leandro wrapped things up. 

Final score, Blues 6 – Yellows 3

Before we move off the pitch and onto the Skinners Arms, I should say that such was the enthusiasm amongst the various players to carry on we took great exception to the next group of players attempting to take to the pitch, until Simon Ink realised that the time was five past eight.

With the weather closing in around us, relatively few people went onto the pub for fear of getting stranded at London Bridge, Kings Cross etc. while fallen trees blocked train-lines. Of those that did head down for a pint or two were myself, Simon Gas, Spizz, Liam, Paul, Tony and Bristol Paul. Spizz seemed to be running a tutorial on social media – not bad for a man in his sixth decade, although he is a rock star – while other topics under discussion included the weather, Chippenham, Swindon Town legend Don Rogers, the weather, the standard of the beer in the pub, Coldplay and the weather. 

Until Friday. Hold on to your hats!

Can you hear the drums, Leandro?

After a two week hiatus I am happy to announce my return to both Friday night football action and the resulting match report duty. Last Friday’s game was one of the better matches we’ve had in recent weeks, with the relatively unusual final score of 2-2.

Simon Gas, prepared as ever, picked the following two teams:

Yellows: Nick (beard), Liam, Simon Gas, David, Andy, Tony, Steve, Leandro and Paul

Blues: Alan, Will, me, Mark, Ian Gooner, Goalkeeping Phil, Danny, Yev and Bristol Paul

I was given the responsibility of handing out the bibs and stumbled on the eighth player listed on Simon's teamsheet for the Yellow team. “’Ere, Alan’, says I – ‘What do you think that word says? It looks like Leandro or something.’ ‘I think that says Leandro’, replies the genial Irishman. After a few puzzled moments scrutinising the handwriting, along jogs Simon Gas. ‘Simon, what does that word say?’ ‘Leandro’. ‘Who’s he?’ Leandro was behind me doing up his boots. Who’d have thought, eh?

And so, eighteen men – including Leandro – took to the field.

The Yellow team took the lead with an odd-looking goal, scored by, inevitably, Leandro. Essentially, someone fired a ball in and from a distance of around two and half feet the impressive Argentine managed to poke the ball in off the crossbar.

The Yellows were worth their lead, with Tony growling commands at people, Steve lumping anyone that came near him and Liam, Leandro and Nick seeing plenty of possession in the final third. However, having specialist goalkeeper Phil between the sticks helped the Blues and they came back from a goal down to take a 2-1 lead, with goals from Alan (following a centre from Yev) and an own goal that was pretty much a replica of the Yellows’ opening effort, albeit that this time Yev’s shot careered down off the crossbar and went in off Andy’s pate.

At this stage the Blues had a good shape, with me and Ian alternating at left back, (Bristol) Paul patrolling the right hand side and Danny doing his box to box thing with characteristic alacrity. Up front, Alan and Yev were ably assisted by Will, who was pulling the strings nicely. However, the lead didn’t last and after getting away with one scare when I let the ball run in a Chuckle Brothers-esque ‘to me, to you’ style cock-up with Danny that saw Liam steal in only to be foiled by Phil in a one on one situation the Yellows equalised after the Blues gave away possession from a goalkick.

Both sides then had ample chances to win the game as a series of arguments broke out; Bearded Nick in particular seemed especially outraged by the fact that he was so busy yelling abuse at his team-mates that he’d forgotten to prevent the ball rolling over the touchline, while Tony had an attack of the vapours about another touchline call and a throw-in that looked somewhat less than legal. I've included a helpful picture in this week's report to refresh everyone's memory.

Two apiece it ended, although both teams trudged off thinking they could have won the game had their finishing been sharper and they’d spent less time moaning.

Before we head off to The Skinners a quick word about mercurial post-punk icon Spizz, who popped in before kick-off to pass on his best wishes and to show-off his new gloves, which reminded me of 1970’s children’s TV characters Itsy and Bitsy. Hopefully the great man will be back in (football) action very soon.

A decent turn-out at the pub this week with discussion topics including the plight of the England cricket team, the plight of the England football team and the plight of anyone working at Radio 1 in the 1970’s, as well as what is becoming a standing agenda item, the pros and cons of Scottish independence. In the first of an occasional series, I bring you

“The Positives for a ‘yes’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum” (please note that this blog is very much in favour of a continued union between our Caledonian cousins and the remainder of the United Kingdom): -

Not having to listen to Scottish football results on the television / radio anymore; to wit, “and we join Roddy Forsthye at Parkhead where there’s news of another goal… ‘Yes, and it’s gone to the home side’”, (oh, you do surprise me).

Yellows fail to dominate midfield and fail to track back.

Despite a one man advantage with eight v seven, the blues cut the yellows to pieces when a big gap developed between defence and attack. Rather than doing the simple ball from the wings our forwards tried speculative shots. The blues had an Argentinian debutant in Leandro, a friend of Will's, Danny, Gashead Simon, Tony, Phil B and big Blades Andy. The latter somehow kept a low shot of mine out. We kept th'e score down to four-two for a long time but the blues suddenly started scoring a hatful of goals.

The yellows had a strongish side with Yev and Steve the picks of the bunch. Nick, Mick K., Spizz, Philip, Baggies Ian and me the guv'nor. Nick got a nice side foot goal from a good low cross early in but inexplicably we stopped playing a passing game.

The blues had excellent performers in Will and Tony, while Gashead showed commendable discipline in defence with Andy. Danny was playing box-to-box. Perhaps a closer match next time when hopefully the Gooner season ticket holders Ian G. and Simon (blogger par excellence) come back to the fray.

The guv