Welcome back to the sporadic match report blog, brought to you by one half of the core management team for Coram Fields Friday night football. As I had to pay the renewal for the WordPress subscription last week I thought I’d better get my money’s worth, so here goes…
Shorn of our dear leader and Chief Operating Officer Simon George, we plunged into Friday night with some customary confusion over exactly who was supposed to be playing, but thanks to a youngish goalkeeper called ‘Fabz’, we (eventually) got to nine aside:
Yellows: Fabz, Bradley, Joe, Paul, me, Will, Johnnie, Alex and Nick F
Blues: Marco, Hector, Remy, Kanat, Anatoily, David, Markus, Nick L and Klaus
This was a pretty decent game, despite the early confusion that saw Remy switch sides twice inside the opening ten minutes. Nick F scored the opener for the Yellow team; the mercurial Ukrainian was the principal goal threat for the Yellow team who boasted a fairly formidable back line of Kanat and Remy in front of Marco in goal. And for a long time it looked like that might be enough, as the Yellows’ defence were also marshalled superbly by Bradley and Joe in front of Fabz.
But just after the half-hour mark Hector steered in an equaliser from some nice work on the right hand side and thereafter chances were at a premium until the final five minutes, as Alex and Will kept the engine thrumming for the Yellows while Klaus was moving the ball for the Blue team.
As we entered the final furlong, however, the increasing confidence of the Yellow defence arguably segued into hubris, and Nick eventually capitalised on one of a clutch of chances following Guardiola-like levels of over-elaboration between keeper and defender to stab home to claim what turned out to be to be the winner. It could have been worse, as one extraordinary passage of play saw Nick hit the post at least twice from a tight angle, while (I think) Markus also had a shot cleared off the line.
At the other end, a nasty collision between Nick F and Kanat saw the former go down claiming a foul, but despite the horrendous sound of bone on bone there did not appear to be a consensus that there was anything deliberate.
Final score: Blues 2 – Yellows 1
(And it was oh so much fun to play in the rain).
And so to the Skinners where me, David, Paul and Will watched a stultifying 0-0 draw between France, who seem determined to match England step for step as the least watchable team at the tournament, and Portugal’s valiant ten men, who have had the handicap of having to field a Las Vegas tribute act to a once potent number 9 throughout the tournament.
Such was the torpor induced by this affair that we had more of a chat about the General Election result and broken noses that anything related to the match itself, which we watched on Will’s phone.
Until Friday….
PS Sorry about losing a ball, Simon.
Stick that in yer blog! 