This was a first 11 a-side fixture against our neighbours and their side contained some real quality, but in the end they were no match for BHS SFC 's superior commitment and organisation.
Tall Paul couldn’t find the time to "go in the loft" and find his boots & gloves, a simple enough task he can probably do without ladders or leaving his ground floor unlike most of people and despite having a fortnight to do so, so Mark Keeper was drafted in for his first start of the season and put in an assured performance between the sticks.
Wolstanton played some excellent football in the first 15 minutes but lacked a cutting edge upfront. They did have two chances one was offside but easily cleared and the other was just wide. After this Brownhills took charge with their functional football and ruthlessness in front of goal as Golden played upfront for the first time in BHS SFC history and had an absolute field day. Stevelyn has already proved that if you give him 18 chances he will miss 4 times more than he scores so it good to see him limited to only 3 chances!
Little G had his all-time best game for Brownhills. For the first time in BHS SFC history he managed to score a rating above an 8, and after many years of vicious rumours he could finally admit to “playing for the other team” without any fear of being stigmatized or castigated. Readie went home to find Little G still in his pocket, covered in lint and scraps of left-over food from BHS canteen which Tom was “saving for later”. Readie has decided that Little G is actually a better storage place for leftovers than even Readie’s own Roald Dahl’s “Mr Twit” beard which he usually uses for this purpose at lunch, much to the chagrin of his colleagues.
“Bridget” pulled Wolstanton to pieces with his speed. At one point he was running so fast he had to wait for the ball to catch up with him. If only he had the touch and skill of Iddy to add to the useless footballing attributes of pace, power, crossing, tactical awareness, teamwork and graft. Indeed, Simon’s great work on the left helped take the pressure away from the defence as we hit our opponents on the break and he found Graham with a great turn of pace and cross and Golden finished exquisitely.
Dean Cunningham, Wolstanton’s diminutive, (it used to use this adjective to describe him in every match report in “The Sentinel” when he played pro/Semi-pro so I looked it up in the dictionary and it means “crap”) ex-pro, showed everyone what a great ex-player and ex-coach he is by forgetting everything he was ever taught and carried the ball toward his own goal, dwelt on the ball too long and was robbed of it twice in 3 seconds by, firstly, Golden and then Stevelyn who held him off and had an easy finish. It seems Deano needs to learn the “Duncan Ferguson” ex-pro’s way to deal with getting mugged! To be fair Deano is the size of a flea on “Duncan Disorderly’s” Great Dane but in this instance showed he is actually much weaker.
Speaking of disorderly Duncans this lead us on to our version who decided to take the skipper’s instruction to add “bite” to midfield almost literally as he kicked and pushed the opposition into submission and refused to apologise for his constant fouling until “worded” by Stocko. It appears that as the sun begins to set on Ashley’s footballing career as “chief crogger” we have truly found a natural heir for Ashley in Duncan whose downright cynical and petulant play has led him to become the first player to ever be booked for BHS without there being a ref! Well since Ashley at least.
Stocko played the ball over the top for Jonny to chase and he found Golden who leathered a low drive in from the edge of the area to make it 3-0.
Brownhills were now comfortable. So comfortable that Craig took an hour to clear and somehow managed to fall over the ball with no one around him and get dispossessed when even Readie would have had time to move his massive bulk and clear it.
Idrees was trying desperately to claim an assist for Graham’s third, unfortunately for him there isn’t a dubious assists panel he can contest this with. His attitude was reminiscent of his old friend and mentor Deano who also hates being tackled or working hard. To be fair, Deano probably tackles back more and actually knows how to play 11 a-side. To top it off Iddy was then crying about being subbed twice when he was so bad he was lucky not to be replaced by Little G who, in fact, got a better mark. Remember Idrees, the stats don’t lie!
Graham could have had more than a Hat-Trick but as he drew the keeper and dinked the ball over him towards the empty goal (I would say net but Idrees couldn’t be bothered to sort the school nets out and Fordy had left his at his club, so "well done" PE department!). This effort appeared to be easily going in but Graham counted against the intervention of Stevelyn’s worm and the ball bounced over the bar. Graham couldn’t believe it and after his initial surprise at seeing Stevelyn’s worm for the first time in over a year, really took his frustration out on it and gave it a good beating.
The defence remained totally rock solid to close the game out and keep a clean sheet and this game was notable for the fact that, for the first game in ages, Gaz was not outpaced by anyone, Hally wasn’t injured, Stocko actually had a decent game (mainly because the ball was nowhere near him), Readie only got skinned, beaten in the air or shrugged off, once in the whole match. The Skipper was very surprised that Little G didn’t beat or shrug him off like he does at 5 a-side every week, or after.
At the (poorly attended by Brownhills) post match de-brief the Wolstanton players were saying they felt Brownhills weren’t 5 goals better than them. On this showing this correspondent believes BHS proved they were much better than that!
