It didn’t look good. 10.50am and Colin, Darren, Tufan and Daniel got the goals and began to set up for a mere 2 a-side.
Then Paul, James, Ahmet, Richard N and Gerald all appeared! BELIEVE. We now just had to wait for JP who’d said yes last week, had since confirmed by e-mail and also had the bibs.
JP? JP? Cooo-eee?
Yellow (5): Gerald, Ahmet, Colin, Darren, Tufan
Red (4): Paul, James, Richard N, Daniel
Hot and firm. Yellow couldn’t score from their own half. Welcome back Gerald from self-imposed injury exile – he still hasn’t seen a Doctor since his last game on April 10th – go you fool!
Red got off to a good start, a testing shot from Paul was saved by Gerald, low down near his post. But he somehow managed to let the small amount of spin bamboozle him and it somehow rolled in. Red then got to 3-2 after 5 minutes. But Yellow replied by forming lots of triangles with the extra man (Tufan, Darren and Colin combing well with Ahmet distributing from the back) and rolled in quite a few to pull away to 9-5 by half time. And what a long half time that was.
Red got the bit between their teeth all of a sudden and clawed back several goals to bring it to 9-8. But they took their foot off the gas and Yellow began to pull away and their opponents had no answer, the stunning fightbacks of the previous two weeks was not to be repeated. Some great saves in there from Richard N and Ahmet, a couple of argy-bargy free kicks, a kung-fu goal from Colin, a tasty deflection in by James, a nifty turn by Daniel, some rockets from Paul, some in and some rather wayward.
Final score: Yelllow 16 – 10 Red
“Tufan, Darren and Colin combing well” – and parting the opposition presumably?