A quick round-up from last Friday for you now, as the two teams of eight shared fourteen goals – equally – between them. If I had the time I’d prepare some sort of data visualisation of who scored the goals, but my GCSE Grade C Maths tells me that Gio scored exactly a third of them, with Alan not far behind with his hat-trick.
Let posterity record the following line-ups:
Yellows: Gio, Geoff, Will, Simon, Joe, Markus, Remy, Yev
Blues: Marco, me, Oleksandr, Kanat, Paul, Nick (‘Coram’*), Anatoily and Alan
It looked for all the world like the Blues were in for a fearful shellacking as the Yellows raced into a 4-1 lead, with Gio doing all of the initial damage through a series of coolly taken finishes either side of specialist goalkeeper Marco. Even with Kanat anchoring the Blue defence in characteristically assured fashion, Gio proved absolutely irresistible.
But a speculative lob followed by an absolute piledriver from Oleksandr, and a phenomenal burst from midfield from Nick – arguably man of the match on the night – capped by a fizzing shot that slammed past Simon in goal brought the Blue team right back into things.
Alan’s second goal was probably the pick of his bunch, a glancing header that he steered into the top corner as it fell over his shoulder to make it something like five each.
By this stage the game had taken on the tempo of a basketball match, with each team taking it in turns to attack and, more often than not, score. Let dispatches record another unerring finish for the Blue team from outside the area via Paul’s left foot, (no less). Remy and Yev augmented Gio’s five goal haul for the Yellow team.
With space seemingly opening up across midfield, (despite the presence of 32 legs on the pitch), it was the Ukrainian duo of Oleksandr and Nick who were pulling the strings for the Blues, while the Ukrainian duo of Yev and Gio (I know he’s from Georgia, but call it artistic licence) pushed the buttons for the Yellows, with Will acting as a metronomic pivot.
With the scores delicately poised at seven apiece Nick launched one more audacious burst from midfield, juggling the ball as he went and slaloming around increasingly tired legs before noted defensive enforcer Geoff unceremoniously prevented further progress with a ‘tackle’ that John McGinn would have been proud of.
Final score: Yellows 7 -Blues 7
To the pub! Topics under discussion included the cultural wasteland of Western Australia, the restaurants of Upper Street, Bristol Rovers’ performance at Leyton Orient the previous weekend and the depressing spectacle of two Octogenarian men duking it to become the leader of the ‘free’ world.
*Presumably in a nod to the nearby Foundling Museum where Coram Fields has its origins, Simon Gas gave Nick (Oleksandr’s friend, this is) the surname “Coram”, as if he were an unfortunate orphan with no provenance. For the record Simon is a busy man and obviously meant no offence, but also for the record Nick’s family name is Filonov.
Stick that in yer blog! 