Saturdays game looked quite bleak when it was announced on Saturday morning that we had the sum total of 9 or possibly 10 players!! This included me (shaggy) probably having to play in goal due to my retarded knee! Among the missing soldiers were Bowlsey who was on a knitting course in Scunthorpe, hopefully to return with B + A Wooly gloves for all, Axel who was hunting for treasure on camber sands and the Birmingham 5 who were shamefully last spotted eating black pudding curry and discussing immigration with Ron Atkinson.
After some late SOS calls it emerged that we had acquired a keeper (bomber) and Adam Woolgar could possibly make it for some of the game. This gave us the Palace-esque squad of 11 – including me with a retard knee. Our fears were put aside somewhat with the news that T Wells only good player had been snapped up by High Brooms in the transfer window for what must be the only transfer fee I have ever heard of in the Tonbridge League - £400!! And their squad looked pretty thin on the ground too, with ‘Taffy Trash Talk’ missing among others.
Nevertheless we started the game with 10 men against their 11…
The plan was to play 4 – 3 – 2:
Back four of Junior, Tim, Smiffy and Ken Dog, tight midfield trio of Baggo, Baileywoggles and Gozzy with Hobbit doing the scurrying and yours truly up top playing the Mark Viduka role of laying the ball off and not doing any running or tackling in particular.
We started the game excellently with the midfield and defence snapping hard into the every tackle and to be honest it looked like it was them who had ten men not us!! The task was made slightly easier by the tiny pitch which allowed us to stay compact and not give them too much space but the attitude was spot on and we soon found ourselves 1 – 0 up when I was able to hook a ball over their big Slovak unit to send the Hobbit clear, he kept his cool and nutmegged Yorkie. The second goal came after Hobbit fleeced Captain Fantastic down the ring wing and he squared the ball to me in the box but I had left my shooting boots at home and scuffed it, I managed to get a second chance and instead of embarrassing myself further I squared to Gozzy who controlled it and beat Yorkie at the near post – 2 – 0. We made it 3 – 0 when Gozzy scored from a nice free kick dedicated I’m sure to Coach Pat.
The second half saw the addition of Adam Woolgar and sods law as soon as we were up to full strength they pulled a goal back from a set piece, however we knew it was a flash in the pan and the fourth goal came when Gozzy completely fleeced Captain Fantastic who munched him in the box to concede a penalty which was duly dispatched for Gozzy to gobble up his hat trick – 4 – 1. The fifth goal came when Gozzy squared it for Baggo who swung his foot at it and completely sliced it, however the ball seemed to hover in the air for him to have another crack….we waited hopefully for a Peter Kay style ‘have it’ boot into the car park but Baggo kept his cool to smash it in against the cross bar 5 - 1, showing that he can indeed re adjust his balance system since having Humpty Dumpty removed from his face. Baggo should have got his second but a perfectly good goal was disallowed by the ref for not re entering the field of play in the correct position!!
Perhaps it could even be because Baggo may have shouted ‘YES’…i think we should all have a meeting at some stage to discuss what is spiraling into a massive problem for the club…if we can’t iron out the constant shouting of ‘Yes’ during the games we could possibly face disciplinary action from Fabio Capello…be warned
Anyway after several miserable efforts I also had a goal chalked off for offside – I am still a bit bitter about that!! However the best was saved till last as Gozzies fourth was pure bucks fizz football, A nice bit of team play was finished off when Baggo played the ball to Gozz who took a couple of touches before calmly side footing the ball into the top right corner with his weaker right slipper to wrap things up with a nice 6 – 1 scorline.
Big thanks to Bomber for stepping at the last minute to play in nets, who did well with good distribution and making a really nice save from a long range shot. This was a performance we can be very pleased with today as we could have been up against it but we came through it comfortably…we need to make sure we are not complacent for what will be a fair tougher test against Hadlow Evolution on Saturday.
Shaggy x
