GRADING MATCH 24/01/07 20:15
LOSE 8-4
1.Matt (c) 4.Steve 5.Leo 6.Robbie 8.Jon 9.Gareth
“Why need a, why need a new faith, when the old is still okay? Will you still, will you still love this, as the interest in it fades away?”
Holy crap! We’re back.
I remember (..okay, re-read) the first ever match report I ever wrote on this team, in the darkest, dimmest, rimmest bum-hole of time – July of 2004. Back then there was no history, no catchphrases, no characters, no stereotyping, no nicknames, no statistics, no tactics, no superstitions, no piss taking. Just a slowly evolving embryonic entity.
The team fought through an assortment of difficulties in the fifteen months that followed - rolling subs, squad size, consecutive thrashings, comedy keeper, crap set-pieces, too seriously-taking, late kick offs, prolonged player absences. The team also grew into their strengths – loyalty, camaraderie, banter, increased fitness, passable skill, victories over shit-bag teams.
And so it’s time to rest the ghost of gone before, and realise the rebirth. Tune back to zero. Reboot the franchise. With Saddam neck hanging, and Bond back shagging, the world became safe enough for The Molly Maguires to come out of hiding to step once more onto the rubber-crumb synthetic. The greatest comeback since Take That dragged their overblown podgy bodies through arenas of rose-tinted cash.
Much was indistinguishable from past sins. A team name change was almost universally baulked at. The players had blown the dust from their musty team shirts, Robbie happy to remove his from it’s lonely frame on his wall of fame, and Matt still snug in his grey trousers and mauve socks. For some players, food and fat had not been kind in the preceding months, easily filling out those extra-large shirts, like four colliding planets drawn into each other’s gravity. Match fitness was lacking at the start of the campaign, and the potential player pool was still refusing to spunk up any fresh blood.
Changes were few but pertinent. As a court officer, Matt had pretty much bugger all to do at work, besides the odd Fast Delivery Report, so proved an instinctive nomination, seconded several times, to be the new gaffer. The fact that he even got a team together for a grading match that he managed to get organised, for a league he’d registered us for next week, suggests that he might yet have the nous for this malarkey. Plus, we could boss his stoogey ass around.
Vida, the home of football, had been razzed to the financial ground. In its place, Goals, the gleaming new soccer centre, equivalent of a web-cam striptease on YouTube vs. Blu-Ray DVD porn on HD-TV*. All bright lights, and security conscious, with an increased
number of pitches, and a website that actually works, let alone the multitude of surplus statistics pouring from it’s cold calculating metal heart. Want to know where the Mollys rank nationally? Yeah, me neither.
Crucially, match day had been changed too. With the grading match scheduled for a Wednesday, rather than a Thursday, with the league itself likely to follow suit, it was hoped the more relaxed, rarefied atmosphere of Wednesday’s smaller league would induce a better turnout.
Fat chance. It was the usual slow tease of players confirming their availability, with Jon already starting the pre-season with two warmly cultivated excuses ready to hand – preferring the picturehouse with his lovely lady, or a flat-out refusal to play in a sub-less team. Pete and Aneel remained on the fringes of decisiveness, and Dean was work occupied, so it was very much an over-familiar spine to the team, with the added scare of the Jon-Gareth attacking hydra rearing its demented head for the first time in eons.
Our opponents, who remain anonymous, saw fit to be half as young as (most of) us, inviting concerns of becoming a Schedule One offender should a loose tackle against them go slightly awry. It was of no surprise to anyone that we failed to keep pace with them throughout much of the match.
With the Mollys’ attacking options relying on Leo’s goal hanging, Jon’s slow, but sure, knee rehab, and Gareth’s fitness and dribble skills, whilst, defensively, Steve and Robbie protected a greasy-palmed Matt, it was going to be a serious test to get the ball from one end of the pitch to the other, without getting turned over more times than a Sunderland players’ roast.
The referee declared that he was going to make us suffer a full on 40 minutes without a half-time break, so all hopes of hearing a stirring rebel yell team talk from the master of ceremonies, Jon, evaporated, alongside our chances of winning, into the frosty air.
Our opposition attacked with clarity and purpose, skilful and deliberate on the ball, drawing their markers in, then pushing the ball beyond us, leaving us weak and powerless to give chase. On the shores of Matt-a-land, they crashed a human wave - the new gaffer failing to deal with the wet balls being t-bagged into his face. Three quick goals were conceded by the Mollys before they hit any kind of stride.
Leo scooped a close range effort into the net, having caught the luck of a through ball, but his shots generally lacked any generated power, having his back to goal, and not running onto passes. Gareth, still looking completely out of place, amongst his veteran heroes, at least was looking like competing with the pace of our opponents. Two absolute blinders from the G-kid, saw him pick his way through the opposition’s outfield, before slam dunking his shots goalward.
At the back, the defence were trying to stamp out the rugrats, but whilst perpetrating tackles wasn’t too difficult against the opposition’s flimsy armoury, a lack of an extra yard of pace, meant energy expended just getting into position, let alone following through with the crunch.
The opposition played with a flat kite formation, that just begged to blown into a tree with a countering man-marking system, but this sure wasn’t the match for any of that nonsense to take place. The Mollys barely managed to retain possession beyond their half, with feeble goal bound efforts easily dealt with, and the enemy comfortable bringing the ball from last defender through the channels. Once Matt trusts that the long throw out is never gonna work, and that a short pass out at least gives us a touch, and a small chance to retain possession, the better. Really the Molly formation was all wrong, and played to the opposition’s strengths. Had the team played a more goal-side waiting game, with quick counter-attacks, when chances arose, we could have made significant tests of their pretty average keeper.
Still Jon managed to get through his first competitive match unscathed, and Gareth finished his hat-trick with the help of the keeper’s fumble off the back wall. And who the hell wanted to win anyway. The last thing this patently unfit, take the lift to the first floor, cream-cake guzzling team needs right now, is getting dicked for the next fourteen games. The match finished in a 4-8 defeat, which bearing in mind all that had gone before, was actually half-respectable. The team were as skilful as they’d always been (i.e. not much), but fitness was always going to tell, just ask any £30m striker.
That’s all I got for you. As I said at the beginning, no history. Yet.
Goal Scorers: Leo 1, Gareth 3
Match Ratings: Matt 6, Steve 6, Leo 5, Robbie 6, Jon 6, Gareth 7
Man of the Match: Gareth
*I know that none of that makes any real technical sense, but I haven’t had to come up with shitty metaphors for months.
LOSE 8-4
1.Matt (c) 4.Steve 5.Leo 6.Robbie 8.Jon 9.Gareth
“Why need a, why need a new faith, when the old is still okay? Will you still, will you still love this, as the interest in it fades away?”
Holy crap! We’re back.
I remember (..okay, re-read) the first ever match report I ever wrote on this team, in the darkest, dimmest, rimmest bum-hole of time – July of 2004. Back then there was no history, no catchphrases, no characters, no stereotyping, no nicknames, no statistics, no tactics, no superstitions, no piss taking. Just a slowly evolving embryonic entity.
The team fought through an assortment of difficulties in the fifteen months that followed - rolling subs, squad size, consecutive thrashings, comedy keeper, crap set-pieces, too seriously-taking, late kick offs, prolonged player absences. The team also grew into their strengths – loyalty, camaraderie, banter, increased fitness, passable skill, victories over shit-bag teams.
And so it’s time to rest the ghost of gone before, and realise the rebirth. Tune back to zero. Reboot the franchise. With Saddam neck hanging, and Bond back shagging, the world became safe enough for The Molly Maguires to come out of hiding to step once more onto the rubber-crumb synthetic. The greatest comeback since Take That dragged their overblown podgy bodies through arenas of rose-tinted cash.
Much was indistinguishable from past sins. A team name change was almost universally baulked at. The players had blown the dust from their musty team shirts, Robbie happy to remove his from it’s lonely frame on his wall of fame, and Matt still snug in his grey trousers and mauve socks. For some players, food and fat had not been kind in the preceding months, easily filling out those extra-large shirts, like four colliding planets drawn into each other’s gravity. Match fitness was lacking at the start of the campaign, and the potential player pool was still refusing to spunk up any fresh blood.
Changes were few but pertinent. As a court officer, Matt had pretty much bugger all to do at work, besides the odd Fast Delivery Report, so proved an instinctive nomination, seconded several times, to be the new gaffer. The fact that he even got a team together for a grading match that he managed to get organised, for a league he’d registered us for next week, suggests that he might yet have the nous for this malarkey. Plus, we could boss his stoogey ass around.
Vida, the home of football, had been razzed to the financial ground. In its place, Goals, the gleaming new soccer centre, equivalent of a web-cam striptease on YouTube vs. Blu-Ray DVD porn on HD-TV*. All bright lights, and security conscious, with an increased
number of pitches, and a website that actually works, let alone the multitude of surplus statistics pouring from it’s cold calculating metal heart. Want to know where the Mollys rank nationally? Yeah, me neither.Crucially, match day had been changed too. With the grading match scheduled for a Wednesday, rather than a Thursday, with the league itself likely to follow suit, it was hoped the more relaxed, rarefied atmosphere of Wednesday’s smaller league would induce a better turnout.
Fat chance. It was the usual slow tease of players confirming their availability, with Jon already starting the pre-season with two warmly cultivated excuses ready to hand – preferring the picturehouse with his lovely lady, or a flat-out refusal to play in a sub-less team. Pete and Aneel remained on the fringes of decisiveness, and Dean was work occupied, so it was very much an over-familiar spine to the team, with the added scare of the Jon-Gareth attacking hydra rearing its demented head for the first time in eons.
Our opponents, who remain anonymous, saw fit to be half as young as (most of) us, inviting concerns of becoming a Schedule One offender should a loose tackle against them go slightly awry. It was of no surprise to anyone that we failed to keep pace with them throughout much of the match.
With the Mollys’ attacking options relying on Leo’s goal hanging, Jon’s slow, but sure, knee rehab, and Gareth’s fitness and dribble skills, whilst, defensively, Steve and Robbie protected a greasy-palmed Matt, it was going to be a serious test to get the ball from one end of the pitch to the other, without getting turned over more times than a Sunderland players’ roast.
The referee declared that he was going to make us suffer a full on 40 minutes without a half-time break, so all hopes of hearing a stirring rebel yell team talk from the master of ceremonies, Jon, evaporated, alongside our chances of winning, into the frosty air.
Our opposition attacked with clarity and purpose, skilful and deliberate on the ball, drawing their markers in, then pushing the ball beyond us, leaving us weak and powerless to give chase. On the shores of Matt-a-land, they crashed a human wave - the new gaffer failing to deal with the wet balls being t-bagged into his face. Three quick goals were conceded by the Mollys before they hit any kind of stride.
Leo scooped a close range effort into the net, having caught the luck of a through ball, but his shots generally lacked any generated power, having his back to goal, and not running onto passes. Gareth, still looking completely out of place, amongst his veteran heroes, at least was looking like competing with the pace of our opponents. Two absolute blinders from the G-kid, saw him pick his way through the opposition’s outfield, before slam dunking his shots goalward.
At the back, the defence were trying to stamp out the rugrats, but whilst perpetrating tackles wasn’t too difficult against the opposition’s flimsy armoury, a lack of an extra yard of pace, meant energy expended just getting into position, let alone following through with the crunch.
The opposition played with a flat kite formation, that just begged to blown into a tree with a countering man-marking system, but this sure wasn’t the match for any of that nonsense to take place. The Mollys barely managed to retain possession beyond their half, with feeble goal bound efforts easily dealt with, and the enemy comfortable bringing the ball from last defender through the channels. Once Matt trusts that the long throw out is never gonna work, and that a short pass out at least gives us a touch, and a small chance to retain possession, the better. Really the Molly formation was all wrong, and played to the opposition’s strengths. Had the team played a more goal-side waiting game, with quick counter-attacks, when chances arose, we could have made significant tests of their pretty average keeper.
Still Jon managed to get through his first competitive match unscathed, and Gareth finished his hat-trick with the help of the keeper’s fumble off the back wall. And who the hell wanted to win anyway. The last thing this patently unfit, take the lift to the first floor, cream-cake guzzling team needs right now, is getting dicked for the next fourteen games. The match finished in a 4-8 defeat, which bearing in mind all that had gone before, was actually half-respectable. The team were as skilful as they’d always been (i.e. not much), but fitness was always going to tell, just ask any £30m striker.
That’s all I got for you. As I said at the beginning, no history. Yet.
Goal Scorers: Leo 1, Gareth 3
Match Ratings: Matt 6, Steve 6, Leo 5, Robbie 6, Jon 6, Gareth 7
Man of the Match: Gareth
*I know that none of that makes any real technical sense, but I haven’t had to come up with shitty metaphors for months.
2 comments:
Lungboy - cool site. You have way too much time on your hands - shouldn't you be playing Zelda or something.
I cannot play for the Mollys this week again as I forgot that Saints are at home, so I will be in the warm babysitting! Maybe my long awaited debut will be next week if I can get the material of my shirt to stretch sufficiently.
Also visited your sister website. Where was your Richmond Fontaine review or your Boo Hewerdine opinions. Fontaine are at the Railway again next week as a warm up date for a slightly larger venue tour - of course I will be there again, got my (one)ticket just in time as it is now a sell out. Boo Hewerdine is down at the Cellars again in June - may be worth a tenner?? I have been contemplating going to see a Bowie tribute act at the Brook - but have decided against it through fear of getting angry.
Keep up the good work. This site has now been added to my favourites along with some other quality, specialist sites.
Thanks for your encouraging words.
I'm going to set up a noticeboard/messageboard type thing on here, so that more generalised comments/chat/excuses can be better accessed, and responded to (like on the besport website).
I'd be up for some more Boo in June - £8 advance. Let me know. Aren't you supposed to be lending me a CD?
The Chronicles will eventually be fully updated with reviews of all the gigs I went to last year, and i can remember all of them really well, which is surprising! (BTW Fontaine was July 05).
Post a Comment