Last Friday saw seventeen fine and upstanding men take to the field to duke it out over a inflated sphere propelled by feet, knees, heads and other bits and pieces.
Here were your teams:
Yellows – Dermot, Pete, Alex, Bert, David, Danny, Morgan, me, Markus
Blues – Bogdan, Joe, Andrea, Steve, Chris, Matt (aka ‘Coops’), Johannes and – all on his own – Alan
And off we go. With the stonger line up the Blues went into a two goal lead – Bogdan ghosted off his man at the far post and nodded in the opener, with Chris also heading in. The Yellows got back into things as Pete was at the culmination of a flowing move and after receiving the ball from Alex took the uncharacteristic approach of calmly passing the ball into the net to reduce the deficit. However, the two goal lead was restored almost immediately after the Yellows made the cardinal error of allowing Johannes way too much time and space way too close to their own goal and the shuffle-shoed German exacted maximum pain to make it 3-1 to the Blues.
It stayed like that for some time in what was probably the tighest phase of the game; the Yellows were moving the ball around quite nicely, chiefly through Alex, Pete and Morgan, with Bert bringing the ball out of defence like Alan Hansen in his pomp. A word for David, too, who I thought had a great game at the back despite the attention of Alan and Johannes.
I believe that Pete’s second goal – a carbon copy of his first – brought the scores to 3-2, but in any case the Blue team had too much up their sleeve as the game entered its final phase. Bodgan stole away again at the back stick to prod home, while Steve bagged himself a rare goal, but the main talking point of the night was Matt’s (Coops’) goal.
Dermot had selflessly positioned himself in goal for most of the game and had made some pretty decent saves, but he had no chance when Matt let fly from just outside the area. It looked to me as if he was competely unsighted, so didn’t the see the ball until too late when it cannoned into his finger and into the net. The ensuing – and very painful – looking break resulted in an eight hour wait at A&E, while also reducing the Yellow team by one, and from there it was always going to be difficult for them to get back into the game, particularly as Danny was feeling his calf and went back in nets.
Final score, Yellows 2 : Blues 5
Just the three of us at the pub this week, where topics under discussion included the Northern Ireland protocol, the travails of Chelsea FC and tits.
I’m not around on Friday, so see you all next week. Get well soon, Dermot!
Stick that in yer blog! 