End of season round-up
Greetings, one and all, as another hard-fought campaign at Coram Fields comes to a conclusion. A quick round up of last Friday’s action for you, to begin with.
With a slew of last-minute withdrawals, (well, two) we ended up with the somewhat challenging configuration of six aside, which looked like this:
Yellows: Will, Chris, me, Morgan, Bogdan and Alan
Blues: Andrea, Steve, David, Mick, Geoff and Yev
I don’t think we need to detain ourselves for too long with the details of the game, but (edited) highlights included Yev rolling the ball into an open goal at least once as Will took it upon himself to try and pick the padlock on the gate adjoining the park to the rear of the pitch after Yev (?) had blasted the ball over the fence. It looked for all the world like he was having a piss, but it turned out that he was just taking it.
Geoff almost completed a hat-trick, but had to be content with a rare brace as he was twice put through completely unmarked to roll past the helpless ‘keeper (me). Mick was in fairly imperious form in goal and despite Bodgan’s best efforts to close him down as he patrolled the area he was able to set up wave after wave of Blue attack. Morgan managed to score a few goals for the Yellow team, although he was sadly unable to tee up Bogdan who was playing his last game for a little while as he prepares to enter the world of Higher Education in the Autumn. Props also go to David for what was described as a “terrier” like performance in midfield, while Andrea expertly snuffed out the vast majority of Yellow attacks.
I think the final score was something like 9-3 to the Blues, but I’ll defer to anyone who can disabuse me of the accuracy of the result.
Simon Gas generously relaxed the purse strings to buy a couple of rounds of drinks using the Coram Fields operating surplus, and a fine evening was enjoyed by those of us who made it to the Skinners, who will no doubt miss our patronage between now and early September. Topics under discussion included the upcoming trip to Brussels, Yev’s half-centenary plans next month, as well as the Ashes test series.
Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to write more reports recently, chiefly to acknowledge my new-found role as the David Warner to Oleksandr’s Stuart Broad; the week before last the Ukrainian maestro scored twice against me in as many minutes by lifting one of over my (5 foot 7) head and then by launching a skidding rocket that pinged over my outstretched arms and slithered into the net. It was one of those efforts I could see him eyeing up, but my aging limbs were unable to engage themselves to do anything about it. It’s an increasingly common feeling.
We should also take this opportunity to wish Johannes every happiness following his recent nuptials – we hope to see him again once they honeymoon is over. And massive credit to Ian for returning from the dead to rejoin the throng – the week before last he even rediscovered his lethal goal-hanging to calmy nudge home. (Maybe we could all benefit from some beta-blockers).
Bogdan has either hit the gym or nature has given him an extra shot of vim recently, and he ended the season as a real defensive force. I’ll leave it to everyone else to nominate their own players of the season, but I would observe that Andrea and Kanat very seldom finish on the losing side, while Danny’s competitiveness is literally in a league of its own. The fire rages on!
Have a great Summer everyone; let’s look forward to more fun and games in the Autumn. The final word of thanks goes to Simon (Gas), without whom none of this would be possible.
Stick that in yer blog! 