Of groins and groans…

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. 

Until Friday, blog readers, until Friday….

A Moral Draw

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.

This is the end of the match report.

Out of shape...

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?

New Recruits

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.

Until Friday, New Recruits: at ease.

My ball, my game and my rules

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. 

Until Friday at 7.00 pm (NB: not 8.00 pm)....

The City Gent

Last Friday’s game was the first held in the daylight at Coram Fields, although it still felt more like mid-Winter than British Summer Time. As is becoming custom, Simon Gas pre-selected his teams but they were subject to significant tinkering, chiefly as a result of the involvement of a clutch of young men, some of whom were playing with their fathers (and their fathers’ friends).

Both Phil and Mick’s sons played; Phil’s son is named Ellis, I believe, while Mick’s male progeny is named Patrick. If I’ve got that wrong please don’t blame me – this seemed to be the consensus in the dressing room afterward amongst the older players. Blame dementia for any issues with accuracy.

I am going to have a go at listing both teams as they finished the game

Colours: Simon Gas, Alan, Ian Arsenal, Simon Ink, me, (a rare sighting of the three-Simon conjunction there), Danny, Paul (much more of whom later), Wing Commander Will

Bibs: Phil, Andy, Ian West Brom, Mick, Ellis (after being transferred following two goals in the first five minutes for the Colours), Patrick (after scoring a hatful and winning the game for the Bibs), a young person who’s name I can’t recall who I believe supported Sunderland and another young gentleman who supports West Ham

My notes tell me that the final score was 8-4 to the team wearing Colours, but that doesn’t begin to tell the story of the game. The Colours roared into a 3-0 lead, Ellis’s pace and clinical finishing revealing a chasm in class and age between those charged with marking him and his colleagues, before Phil made it 3-1 after I pressured Paul, dressed for the evening as a City Gent, in goal.

Someone then made it 4-1 to the Colours, upon which I was transferred over to the Colours in an attempt to handicap their clear advantage while young Ellis donned a bib. Simon’s juggling initially drew the desired response, as the Bibs got back to 4-3 before the Colours re-established their dominance via a slew of goals, including one apiece for Alan and Ian Arsenal, and at least three for young Patrick, who’s sleight of foot and general prowess in front of goal stretched the lead toward double figures.

Simon Gas made another late alteration as Simon Ink moved over to the Colours with Patrick going to other way, leading to the team in Colours ‘boasting’ all three Simons. However, by this stage Wing Commander Will had taken up permanent residence in goal, having sustained knee-knack as he twisted to cut the ball in from the by-line. Will’s studied excellence in goal prevented the Bibs from getting back into things in any meaningful way and the game ended, as usual, with one team way ahead of the other.

Quite what the various young people involved made of it all is anyone’s guess; Ellis and Patrick in particular are clearly very good footballers and may have been embarrassed at the ease with which they could find space and the back of the net. But as the game wore on the effectiveness of all the young men seemed to wane - this may have been a consequence of indifference to the final score, or boredom, or wanting to go easy on a crew of old-timers.

An alternative explanation could be that they were bewildered and ultimately stymied by the fact that someone had elected to play the entire game wearing a pin-striped black suit. Paul had apparently been involved in a series of high-level business meetings throughout the day which were so mysterious that even his wife was not aware of their arrangement. Eschewing fripperies such as football boots and shorts, this thrusting colossus of commerce took to the pitch wearing not only the aforementioned suit, but also black shoes, a flat cap and initially at least, a fluorescent yellow puffa-jacket. The jacket was soon discarded as the serious business of repelling attacks and taking free-kicks was taken on with the aplomb of a man used to multi-tasking, although his red tie remained resolutely in place and his top button firmly fastened. Danny made the observation that the tie in particular seemed to help Paul’s balance, acting as a sort of sporting plumb line which ensured that he remained balanced and In Control. A veritable tour de force of a performance from the man who likes to be known as The Guvnor – how will he follow this up? Will his next performance be in a bear suit? Will he arrive this Friday in a deep-sea diver’s outfit? Could he come wearing a safari suit and pith helmet? Who can possibly say? From the point of view of the young men it must have been a bewitching performance from Paul, perhaps all the more so because the rest of us seemed so blasé about the fact that someone had turned up to play football dressed in formal business attire.

And so to the Skinners Arms for a couple of post-match pints and a discussion on welfare dependency, house prices, Rolf Harris and an extraordinary assertion from Paul involving the expired Python Graham Chapman and Britain’s first bachelor Prime Minister, Edward Heath. I am guessing that there will be rather more discussion of dead Prime Minsters this coming Friday. Until then…

Scottish goalkeeping

With Winter still very much in attendance it was another parky Friday night at Coram Fields on the 22^nd March. Actually, never mind parky – it was downright Arctic. With Simon Gas back from his week’s sabbatical the Bristolian soccer mastermind arrived with a pre-prepared set of teams. They were as follows:

Bibs: Ian Arsenal, Ian West Brom, Danny, Yev, Paul, Simon Inky, Joe

Colours: Ross, Alan, Simon Gas, Liam, Geoff, Andy, me

I thought that the Bibs looked slightly stronger on paper, but as is proving the rule rather than exception on the new domain, one team’s advantage was amplified rather unkindly and despite the best efforts of the Colours team they were on the wrong side of a 9-1 reverse. 

The Tale of the Tape, if you will, was that the Bibs hurtled into a 2-0 lead via goals with Yev and Danny, (I think). There then followed what felt like a lengthy period of stalemate, before the Colours committed footballing hari-kari; from a Colours corner they managed to gift possession to the Bibs and Yev stole through virtually unopposed with all six outfield Colours in the attacking half of the pitch. 

That felt like a crucial goal and so it proved. With Danny and the Ians (appearing tonight at the Dublin Castle: £8 admission, £6 concessions) marshalling superbly from the back Yev was able to feast on the service from Joe and Simon Ink and gorged himself like a Transylvanian nobleman on the porous Colours defending. The Colours solitary goal – although we hit the post twice – came from Andy, who took some good positions up front and could have had a hat-trick.

The major talking point of the evening was an extraordinary non-goal from Yev with the score at around the 4-1 mark. The ball was dabbed through to him with just Liam between the Ukrainian hitman and yet another score – Yev shimmied, dummied, feinted and stabbed the ball goalwards, whereupon he turned his back to play and started walking back up the pitch for what he assumed would be the inevitable restart from the centre spot. He hadn’t banked, however, on a) the ball not travelling quite as quickly as he thought and b) the lithe athleticism of young Liam, who scampered back to stop the ball on the line. I could see it hadn’t crossed (to the disbelief of many others further away from play), something confirmed when the young ‘keeper swore on nothing less than his mother’s life that it was not a goal. Liam’s Mum was safe – the goal was not given. What was it they used to say about Scottish goalkeepers? Alan Rough, eat your heart out. Sadly for the Colours a suitably piqued Yev then went on to score another three or four goals. 

The last goal of the night was a header from Danny, whereupon Simon called an end to proceedings. 

And once more to the Skinners Arms, where the TV was showing another 8 goal drubbing as England smashed the mighty principality of San Marino. We now go into our Easter break; unbelievably, when we reconvene in two weeks it will be British Summer Time. Make sure you bring your sun cream...