Welcome back one and all, for the greatest show on Earth, or the greatest show in WC1N, at any rate.
Another Summer – if you can call it that – has slipped by, and yet another new season awaits. As it says on the blog: who played, who scored, who shouted, who committed handball, who went to the pub? Read on, to find out, or don’t bother and do something else more interesting instead.
Here are your teams for the first game of 2024/25:
Yellows: Simon Ink, me, Bogdan, Andre, Markus, Mick, Alan, Patrick Chen, Morgan
Blues: Simon Gas, David, Bradley, Joe, Anatoili, Beryl, Johnnie, Nick and Yev
Mystery solved as to who the mysterious ‘BL’ was (it’s Beryl’s nom de plume, his nom de football, if you will), we duly got underway.
Markus scored the first goal of the new campaign, taking advantage of some slack marking from the Blues to nod unerringly past the keeper from Alan’s corner. He also scored the second goal of the campaign, taking advantage of some dozy defending to swivel and volley from all of about three yards. Simon Ink got off the mark for the season soon after, prodding home a fizzing cross-shot from Morgan that may or may not have been going in from a distance of about three inches.
Man of the match Markus (that’s alliteration right there, folks), bagged a hat-trick from the penalty spot after David was somewhat uncharitably penalised for handball after volleying the ball at his arm. The Swedish marksman made no mistake, and neither did Alan in vociferously calling for the penalty to be awarded in the first place.
I think it was around this stage that there were some testy exchanges for handball at the other end, as Andrea was flagged up for handball, although the resulting free kick came to naught. The champagne moment of the match was Anatoili’s extraordinary backwards ‘throw on’, which lead Mick to opine that “this was not the Paralympics”, (the decidedly one-legged performances of various Coram Fields’ players down the years notwithstanding). It was deemed to be a foul throw.
Joe pulled one back for the Blue team, who did not deserve to be on the wrong side of a four nil scoreline, heading in at the near post, before the evergreen Yev steered home shortly afterwards from distance to set up a potentially tense finish. Morgan, however, got the goal his all-round performance warranted with an absolute blockbuster of a finish, spotting that the keeper was off somewhere near the Brunswick centre and passing the ball in from about thirty yards with enough elevation to evade the despairing legs of the tired Blues’ defence.
Final score: Yellows 5 – Blues 2
To the pub! A decent turnout outside to begin with, as stories were exchanged of Summer activity, including Johnnie’s Rouenous trip to Normandy and Yev’s time in Paris and then Italy.
As the night grew chillier we adjourned to the interior of the Skinners for some allotment chat, before we came to the end of our allotted time and left for home.
I’m away this week, but the blog returns in a fortnight.
Stick that in yer blog! 