Match abandoned as only three confirmed (Oz, Richard P, Daniel).

Yellow: Gerald, Tufan, Bruno, Pedro, Andy, Richard N
Red: Eliseu, Liam, Nick, Ahmet, Daniel, Jim

From almost cancelled to 6-a-side with a few new faces to keep us alive – welcome!
A very even game. For the first, Pedro laid off for Daniel down the wing who crossed first time to Eliseu who stroked in. That’s about it for the first half. Apart from Daniel curving a perfectly weighted low cross from Eliseu over the bar from two metres out of the goal. What an April fool. A shocking, miss-of-the-season contender. And Pedro took on JP’s mantra with dragbacks-a-plenty.
Yellow equalised shortly after the break. Daniel got a ball in the face but after realising that it wasn’t that bad (despite much concern from both teams), he said play on. Red ignored this and stopped. Tufan took full advantage of the Red statues, ran with the ball down to the goal line and shot in at the near post from a tight angle. 1-1 and all to play for.
Up until this point it had been very even but Red exhibited some clinical finishing, taking it to 5-1. Nick tried to dribble out of goal but passed it straight to Gerald who side footed it into the empty net to provide hope and Bruno and Jim also went close but the woodwork got in the way. It really wasn’t one-sided but a few more goals from Red ensured a confident win.

Final score: Yellow 3 – 9 Red

Part 1: Utter shambles. The first person to show up is Oz, who was a definite No. Then Richard P and Daniel followed by Eliseu and Bruno. Five, and with two others confirmed still to come – Game on!
“Build it and they will come” has been our unfailing mantra. So we did, and then we kicked the ball around. For a long time. Eventually, just when were deciding on teams for 2 vs 3 or 2 vs 2 and a keepr or call it off, out of the distance (it’s way past 11am by this point) Richard N appears!
Three-a-side. Colin clearly had a problem with the concept of changing a clock. And just as we’d donned bibs and about to press the clocks, a Hairdresser rep invited us to join their poorly attended game. 45 minutes of farce.

Part 2:
Hairdressers (them, Yellow): Chris, Mani, Tom, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?
Estate Agents (us, Red): Eliseu, Bruno, Richard P, Richard N, Daniel, Oz, Phil*, ?*
*loaned from hairdressers

Eight-a-side. Kick off must have been at 11.30am. 35 minutes each way. Oz promptly lasted five minutes again and settled in goal. Eliseu got the first goal after some promising signs early on. Bruno added a second shortly after. Eliseu fed the ball down the inside of the defender. It looked too fast but Bruno bounded down the wing outside of the defender and fired low across the goal and in. Great through ball, great shot. It was looking good and it wasn’t just a Brazilian masterclass. Richard N leaped to meet a perfect Ellis cross with his head and the returned the favour shortly after for Ellis to nod down and in. It was like the River Spay at spawning time.
4-0 up at half time.
The Hairdressers changed a few positions in the second half. It stopped the rot but Red still had chances. The only goal came from an aerial flick on from ?. Daniel (who’s going to milk this move as things like this never work out for him) flicked it over his marker with his first touch, perfectly laid off  with his second (this Brazilian thing is catching) to Bruno, whose shot was saved but Richard P was on on hand to stroke in the loose ball. A very nice move.
Sadly they did get a goal, Bruno nodding in his own goal while trying to head clear a dangerous aerial cross. A big shame as he’d put in a good shift with an unbelievable amount of tackles.
Oz was good in goal, Richard N was solid in defence (backed up by everyone who covered back and got their share of blocks or tackles in) Phil worked hard down the left even with a groin injury, Daniel and ? joined well down the right as did Bruno and Eliseu up front. Good teamwork. However, they were rubbish. The number of their passes that found one of us was like a blatant case of match fixing. And they didn’t communicate at all.

Final score: Hairdressers 1 – 5 Estate Agents

Red took in the invalids. Oz with a dodgy hamstring, Richard N with a dodgy hip and Daniel with his bruised thumb and a heavy snot-ridden & coughy cold.
Jean introduced Bruno. He also brought a member of the paparazzi. That’s nothing new. She stayed for the whole game. That is!

Yellow: Oz, Richard P, Tufan, Abu, Jean
Red: Ahmet, Jim, Yaya, Richard N, Daniel

5-a-side. Poo-hah, quite a fast game. But we’re happy we had one as just three said yes. Only two were there after 10 minutes but a steady trickle made it seven, and then Ahmet and two rejects from the Hairdressers joined us. A nice bite to the surface and the sun came out for the second half.
A couple of chances at either end came to nothing. Then Jim, seeing Daniel run clear, hoofed the ball up the pitch. Richard P, in goal, and Daniel arrived simultaniously at the first bounce and the resulting richochet fell kindly for Daniel who stroked it into the empty net. Short-lived joy for Red as Yellow quickly equalised. And then similar to last week, goals at both ends.
It wasn’t a particulalry feisty game but we fell like flies. Yaya settled in goal for long periods as he hurt his leg. Daniel saved a sharp shot from Jean at a tight angle but had to come out of goal because he’d bent back his thumb in the process. It’s big and blue now. Abu, as it transpired, had only recently had his leg out of plaster and whilst he started well enough, he ended up in goal. He was just about static but was able to make an impresseive number of saves. Oz pulled his hamstring so also ended up in goal. To make it even, Yaya and Abu swapped teams to even up the injured goalkeepers. I know this doesn’t make sense in the report but it did on the pitch and I can’t be bothered to explain. But the injured resiliently all played on – sterling work chaps! A large number of corners went straight out. One or two goals took advantage of the injured keepers! Off the pitch a three year old girl from one group of people enjoying the sun sauntered 50 meters to another group who didn’t immediatly notice her as she walked away with their child’s bicycle. To reflect this lack of integrity and morals on the Rye, Jim melodramatically hopped around after he supposedly got an unintentional stud on his toe. Although play carried on, the subsequent Yellow pass fell short and he surprisingly latched onto it, sprinted forward and fired in. And then limped back. A cynical method to get his first goal in five games since he first donned those boots of negative equity on January 29th. An sleepless and guilt-ridden night in the North household I proffer.

Final score: Yellow 6 – 6 Red

Yellow: Jim, Darren, Colin, Tufan, Eliseu
Red: Ahmet, James, Richard N, John G, Daniel

Right. So let’s get something straight before we start. I’m not sexist.
5-a-side and arguably the muddiest game since autumn 2010. And welcome back to John his first game of 2012 and to Darren, an enforced absence due to moving home – a false dawn though, he’s about to have his first child!�
A scrappy first half. Richard N got a lovely left foot shot to open the scoring after no one could get control in the Yellow area. After that the lead swap hands a couple of times, the scoring of each goal alternating from one team to the next. Red fluffed a hatful of chances and Yellow made them pay by taking theirs. Included in these first half goals were at least three goalkeeper nutmegs, the worst of which was a tight-angled shot from Darren on the right that had the power of an eight-year old, nay, six year old girl which deflected in between John G’s legs and in doing so knocked him over and he almost took the goal with him. Another ping-ponged around the heads of defenders and attackers alike, finally falling to Jim (has he scored since buying those fluorescent boots!?) who could only head against the bar but it looped out for Tufan to nod it down and in. 6-4 to Yellow at the break.
The second half was a different affair, much more open end-to-end stuff. Red got us started with a very quick goal within ten seconds of the re-start. Yellow responded with three of their own to make it 8-5 with half an hour left. They didn’t score after that and Red drew level. And then Yellow scored an amusing own goal. I missed what happened apart from the ball rolling into the Yellow net but it quickly became apparent that Darren had taken a “safe” throw back to Eliseu in goal. He didn’t control it and it trickled in. Red were very gentlemanly about it and scratched it off as they didn’t want to win like that. They wanted to score their own goals which Daniel promptly did with an awful scrappy finish to put them ahead. Ahmet made a lovely diving save to keep out a Tufan shot and keep Red in front.
And with seven minutes left she sauntered over and onto the pitch to interupt the game. A lady. I think we now know who ate all the pies. She looked as if she hadn’t run since….since….she looked as if she hadn’t run. And asked to join our team! Not necessarliy today but she wanted to join an amateur team (what gave it away?) to play every Sunday and ideally mixed. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but we’re quite a male-looking bunch of blokes? Tufan in goal had made an effeminate double-handed flap earlier but his beard surely makes things clear? So with the time-honoured excuse of “no girls” supported by “it’s bit fast and rough” I sent her packing. Except she didn’t. Ahmet made it quite clear that we were in the middle of a game, as if that wasn’t plain enough already (and I’ve since received an email stating he thought she was after a piece of him!). And I clarified that we’d never had girls play with us. But she didn’t budge and seemed adamant that we would welcome her with open arms (Can’t…quite…reach…..around). “What team do you play for?” she asked. I explained we weren’t a team, just a random bunch of well-to-do chaps who’d made acquaintances in the workplace or at university. This seemed to register. “You’re not a proper team?” I replied in the negative. “Oh.” And with a various recommendations of contacting the council, the East Dulwich Forum or general web-search, she ambled off. But the fact we weren’t a proper team seemed to have had the biggest impact. WTF??!!?? Not good enough for you??
Anyway, the stoppage seemed to give yellow the collywobbles and they capitulated in the remaining minutes with almost every Red attack ending with Colin picking the ball out of the net. Not his fault – an absent defence, commiting too much up front trying to restore parity.  And as the chalked-off goal would have made no difference to final result (and wouldn’t have been scrubbed off at a less significant juncture) I’m going to put it back on!

Final score: Red 13 – 8 Yellow

Final score: Red 6 – 6 Yellow

Final score: Yellow 5 – 4 Red