Tuesday 14 November 2017

Major Tinkering

Another, more timely match report for you now, following last week’s monolithic round-up. Last Friday saw us once again scrabbling for numbers owing to a combination of last minute cancellations and people being busy doing other things. As such, the line-ups were subject to scrutiny from a man called Major Tinkering. This is what he ended up with:

Yellows: Stan, Patrick, Mick, Danny, me, Michele, Yev, Ross

Blues: Peter, Joseph, Charlie, Simon Gas, ringer (Daniel?), Paul, Ian Baggies

Simon drafted in a ringer who I think was called Daniel to help bolster the numbers, but with Mick, Peter and Yev all arriving late the first few minutes were inevitably disjointed and chaotic. Nevertheless, the Yellow team – featuring all three Kavanagh men – took the lead through either Stan or Patrick, whose fraternal understanding was very much the main talking point of a somewhat disappointing game.

Mick eschewed my various exhortations to join the Blue team, which was the original plan, and instead donned a Yellow Bib and played alongside his two sons. I can’t imagine why. As the goals started to crash in for the Yellows I changed sides to attempt to balance the two teams, with Peter arriving to join the Blue team. This left with us a game in which the three aforementioned Kavanagh men – plus Danny and Michele – were pitted against the massed ranks of Morgan Stanley. Clearly, corporate finance is not what it once was and despite having a distinct aerial advantage (Joe, Peter and Charlie must have a combined height of around twenty feet), the twinkle toes of Patrick and Stan and the ceaseless activity of Michele’s feet meant that they cruised away with the game, deftly stroking the ball around the park and in Stan and Patrick’s case, using their brotherly intuition to ping thirty yard balls blindly in the safe knowledge that one of them would be on the end of it.
The goals that the Yellows did score were chiefly due to some defensive mishaps, (never more so than when I failed to deal with a high ball from Charlie which eventually fell to him after Peter’s initial shot was blocked). 

At 7-2 Peter finally made the decision to switch the teams and Danny duly jogged over to don a Blue bib and that team ‘won’ the last few minutes, forcing home the one goal after some robust work through the middle of the park. And a mention for Paul, who I am reliably informed by Michele performed a nutmeg on the stylish Hiberno-Italian out on the shadows on the touchline.

Final score: Yellows 7 - Blues 3/2 (or Blues 1 – Yellows 0), if you want to give Danny two wins in one evening.

And so to the pub, where the England v Germany game was on, not that anyone deemed it worthy of any attention. Talking points included the centenary of the Russian revolution, the eternal topic of men and women (Ross and Yev in discussion there) and not least, plans for the next few weeks, as Simon Gas is off to South East Asia after this Friday’s game until December 15th

If we agree that Simon is very much the Captain Mainwaring of Friday Night Football, neither the main man nor myself as a would-be Sergeant Wilson will be around on the 24th November - continuing with this theme, neither is Danny’s Corporal Jones, nor Steve’s Private Frazer. Let’s hope the game in two weeks’ time is not doomed, (“doomed!”). Perhaps we’ll have to leave it all to Major Tinkering…

I’m off to see Blondie on Friday, so see you all on the first December. At ease!

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