Match Reports
31/01/09
St Francis 2s 4-7 Men's 4th XI
Brighton 4s 7 St Francis 2s 4
When you are faced with a wall of flames, an impenetrable blaze you must fight fire with fire and unleash Dante’s inferno. It was for this reason that I turned to Thompo when faced with the well known tackling technique of our St Francis opponents. I felt confident that with Thompo in the ranks any fire would be tempered and cancelled out by the fire-some Thompo Tackle.
I managed to get 11 boys together, with Smithy otherwise engaged moving house unable to make it on the day. This meant that while we thought it would be a short term fix Thompo was installed as a make shift left half to nullify the St Francis penetration on their right wing, together with his fellow left sided player the incomparable Mullens. To be honest the grey beards on the left side may be feel a little uneasy… not sure why but old guys mucking about with boys covered in whitening face fuzz just doesn’t seem right. On a more innocent view they looked like two Gandalf’s in the training…”You shall not pass!”
With Jamie Morris, one of the best players of last week, recalled to the 3s we welcomed back the even taller Ready for an awesome game at sweeper.
That said the beginning of the match was less than special as within a few moments St Francis caught us napping and scored, despite me getting a hand to it.
This spurred us into action and we quickly levelled the score following good work from Benson who crossed for Davros to apply the finishing touch. On the very next attack we took the lead through Benson and normal service seemed to be restored.
The passing was still poor and St Francis were far from out of it, however, Benson managed to convert a penalty flick to give us a bit of wiggle room.
Wrighty was almost done for dereliction of duty for having a nice chat with their umpire when perhaps he should have been marking their forward… yeah…mark him? Please!
With the half drawing to a close The Dobinator, in his favoured centre half role, was able to score and give us a 4-1 lead.
The half-time was mainly taken up with a couple of passing/marking related clichés (thank you) and the two Dans renaming themselves Bence and Simple Simpson. Also the fear that Thompo may have another half in front of him.
With the second half under way Bondy had a handbag moment following yet another terrible tackle and managed to crumble to the floor and stop the game. For this performance he was able to win the handbag and DOD, well done.
The goals soon flowed that to the excellent Simple Simpson who was having an un-official (skipper’s choice) man of the match performance battling a fighting for everything on the right flank and being a constant thorn in St Francis side.
Benson was able to complete his hat-trick and Davros was able to bag a second along with The Dobinator. At 7-1 up and cruising we took our eyes off the ball.
Maybe it was the strain of watching the horizon for the sight of Smithy bounding over the hill or just the cold but everything seemed to go to pot. As our aching limbs freeze almost to a halt St Francis went into overdrive and scored a scorching goal to get some pride. They got a little above themselves and a scrambled effort was parried over the line by my inner thigh, well done me. I did manage to make one diving save, I know it was a save because official man of the match (as voted by the players in the bar) Ready said it was a good one. However, St Francis weren’t finished and after a midfield altercation made them think they “Had us rattled” they scored when a shot I saved looped from the top of the D to the back post where their skinny hat wearing lad (not to be confused with one of our “skinny” hat wearing players, Bondy) square cut the ball past a confused looking Perry for a ridiculous 7-4 closing scoreline.
No problem though as the three points were ours and with South Saxons losing to the in form Worthing 3s it meant our lead at the top of the table has stretched to 10 points. Well done (and thanks) to Thompo for helping us out, and for playing for 70 minutes for the first time in a while (my wife seems to think is the first time she can remember me ever saying that Thompo played for the whole game).
The shock of it all though is that elder statesmen such as Ready, Mullens and Thompo, well known for falling over a fair amount, all managed to stay on two legs for the whole game. It isn’t the 11 goal scoreline or the comedy goals but that very fact that will set this match apart in the years to come.
Team: Brooksy, Ready, Nash, Perry, Wrighty, Wolfy, Bondy, The Dobinator, Simple Simpson, Davros, Bence.
Goal scorers: Bence 3, The Dobinator 2, Davros 2.
DB