Yellow: Bruno, Jim, Oz, Ahmet, Steve, Gerald
Red: James, Eliseu, Daniel, Keith, Richard P, John
More of the same, I asked for. And what did we get? More of the same with a cherry on the top. Another corking 6-a-side with Keith making his debut – welcome sir. Sun? Sun! SUN! And a strange boggy pitch with long grass and bobbles.
Reds were off to a flying start, peppering the Yellow goal a-plenty in the first ten minutes with barely a Yellow shot. James hit the post and Daniel heading narrowly wide were just a couple of the many misses. Ahmet claimed the sides were uneven and that the defensive levee was about to burst it’s banks. But this was disputed so the game carried on, the only interruption to the great game being a farce of differing clock times. But Ahmet’s mind-games paid dividends. Yellow made Red pay for squandering their opportunities by making the most of their now frequent chances. Jim got a 15 minute hat trick, chesting in a Bruno shot was the flukiest of the bunch followed by a low shot after a breaking run down the left for the coolest of finishes. Red did manage to get one in reply, but those mind games….Yellow 5-1 up at half time.
Red decided to abandon their much prepared formation of the first half and went for total football. And slowly but surely began to claw back some parity with Eliseu getting a couple to complete his hat trick and Keith following up to strike in the loose ball after Gerald parried a shot. Yellow weren’t pinned back though, this was end-to-end stuff with both keepers shouting for their team to cover back when attacks broke down. And just when you thought the comeback was about to become reality, Bruno stroked home a goal at close range just before the clocked beeped. Elation for Yellow, exasperation for Red. But what a corker.
Moment of the match: An unbelievably incredible flying dive from Eliseu to save a shot. Sadly no cameras to capture it, he didn’t reach it and it was off-target anyway. But….(and I’ve been trying to do it justice for the last two minutes now and I don’t have the vocabulary) it was f#*king spectacular!
Final score: Yellow 6 – 4 Red