Match reports

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

Red: Oz, Richard P, Tufan, Steve, Chris, Prit
Yellow: Bruno, Kevin, Daniel, Liam, Matt, Jim

Sketchy memory as I’ve left this a bit long before writing the report but a few jotted down notes in one of my many notebooks tell the story. I’ll try to embellish them a little.

6-a-side. Chris and Prit from the hairdressers joined us for this bank holiday game. Chris volleyed in from a corner. Bruno got a few tap-ins. Liam fell over and tried to foul Richard P in the process. Red regularly fired wide. Richard P fired one in high at the near post. A long ball arrived at Jim and Oz coming out of goal. Jim took a nice touch to take it past him and then fire into the empty net. Daniel in defence saw a large gap in front of him. None of his team mates wanted to fill it so he passed, ran into it, received the ball back and ran forward right down the middle and toe-poked in from the edge of the area. Matt shot and it went out for a throw. In his own half!! Bruno controlled a high pass with his chest. He stopped and looked down with disdain. Mud on his Brazilian shirt. Hilarious. Clearly they have no mud in Brazil and stay on their feet.
My apologies that this report is rather meagre (poor embellishing) which certainly doesn’t reflect the quality of this great, close game.

Final score: Yellow 8 – 6 Red

Yellow: Richard N, Richard P, some hairdressers
Red: Jim, Oz, some hairdressers

Poor show so we joined in withe the other lot and had a good game. Inspired by his latest “Cash for Goals” tag-line, Jim put in the first for goal for Red and then Yellow scored two. oz missed a penalty with the last kick of the game! Very muddy and very enjoyable.

Final score: Red 1 – 2 Yellow

Red (5): Bruno, Eliseu, Seb, John, Richard P
Yellow (6): Richard N, James R, Tufan, Oz, Daniel, Matt

Sunny. Not as muddy as the rain would have us believe. It’s all to do with the empty aquafers. James said yes. But he had to light a barbeque for the allotment society so in fact he lied. Serendipity stepped in the form of another James. John’s possible +1 also couldn’t make it so Seb, another guest also valiantly strode onto the pitch.
And James took on the mantle immediately by scoring the first goal! It’s now six months since I started writing this report so unsurprisingly can’t recall much else other than that Seb scored four.
That’s it. Thank you to James and Seb for making up the numbers, apologies to all for not fulfilling my duties as captain and completing a reasonable report. This one really is a shocker!

Final score: Red 11 – 6 Yellow

 !*!*!*!*! HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY PCFC !*!*!*!*!

Sunny and cloudy in equal measure. Blustery. Uneven. Firm.

Thank you for coming you sterling bunch of skillful and handsome gentlemen.

To commemorate the coincidental timing of our tenth anniversary game with her diamond jubilee, the Queen personally donated 10 fanfare players who formed a tunnel to play us onto the pitch.

Final score: Red 10 – 6 Yellow

A good game, an impressive turnout and all preserved for the history books with a team photo at the end.

Photos can be found here

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