The Molly Maguires: November 2007

Date: 24/11/07 Time 11:00am
Location: Mountbatten Centre, Portsmouth
Line-Up: Matt, Steve, Leo, Dean, Adam, Michael
Final Score: 12-0

Wow. This was historical. Two years and five days since that controversial 8-8 draw on the frosty coated astro-turf of Southampton’s home-soil, and the re-match finally happened. Despite lots of hollering and keenness to partake in this revenging opportunity, many sure-fire Southampton-ites were unable to come good on their promise. And boy, did you suckers miss out.

A six-strong line-up would go toe to toe with the unknown quantity and quality hordes of Portsmouth’s finest, with a genuine fear of failure given the stacked odds – no recognised striker; the away pitch disadvantage; recent moral-sapping league defeats; and perhaps, most crucially, Portsmouth’s actual desire to play this return fixture. Had it taken two years for them to recruit the necessary super-soldiers? For the steroids to take full effect, and the body-building to maintain the physiques? For the high-altitude, all-weather training return trip to Tibet, to find themselves, to be completed? Or just two years to get a group of colleagues together in the same place at the same time, that doesn’t involve beer directly after work?

Reflective of modern football, only one player was true home-grown talent (moi – the unambitious bastard); the others either lived or worked in Southampton exclusively; or had no connection with Southampton at all; or had no connection with the Service at all (also known as the obligatory ringer). The team were gonna rely on what panned out to be a 3-0-2 formation. A strong defensive line-up of Adam, Steve, and Michael in front of a desperate (to play outfield) Matt, was complimented by the attacking duo equivalent of the Mario Brothers – Deano and Leogi. Their partnership forged in the lost drive through Portsmouth’s North End, burnt out cars and drug-dealing pimps; both lucky that Dean’s shotgun navigating skills didn’t see them driving into the sea.

Add to the fact that Adam’s chrome-rimmed, sports exhaust, pimped out Ford Muppet S, lacking sat-nav, and armour-plating, only managed to find the Mountbatten Centre with the help of Travelodge (I Googled the correct spelling), a map and a highlighter pen, and Matt’s usual suspect last minute organisational skills, and it was verily a surprise, we didn’t concede by non-attendance default.

The pitch was something to behold. Someone had either airlifted it wholesale from the ghetto streets of Rio, or Tony Robinson had given up on dusting off the remaining sand on this ancient pitch discovery. Playing across the length of the main pitch, it’s width meant it almost resembled a square, and the prospect of us playing on such a huge surface area, is probably the same daunting sensation a spider gets dancing on the surface of Matt’s belly.

With it decided to play the match six-a-side, or else die ‘blowing out our ass’, we were not anticipating the quite phenomenal way we dominated this match, played to our individual powers, played to our collective strength, and embarrassed a team of mostly youngsters, some of whom had no shame in wearing a Oki-branded Pompey shirt, and then fully justified their unfortunate mental illness.

There were very cogent reasons why we won this match so emphatically, and the absence of Don as referee was just the tip of the crusty wart. For a start, the kickoff time was 11.15am on a Saturday morning, not 9.15pm on a weekday work night. Personally, I was as psyched as a spring-loaded Energizer bunny tanked on Red Bull and vodkas riding in the lap of Richard Hammond. Secondly, there were no walls – no rebounds off the back; no constant ‘ball in play’ shenanigans – when the ball went out, it stayed out for a little while, allowing breathers and re-grouping, before throw-ins were taken, in contravention of the ‘not above head height’ rule. Thirdly and fourthly - personnel and tactics, with which Southampton displayed the Gold medal Olympic standard, and Portsmouth displayed the school sports day taking part that counts paper rosette.

With their seventh man as substitute and referee, there was some hope that this wasn’t going to turn into some manhood-waving testosterone showdown, and instead resemble a fair contest of attacking verve and defensive swagger. And that’s what you would’ve seen had you been wearing some 3-D style colour glasses that filtered out blue, because it was nothing but the white away shirts of the Southampton team that were bursting out beyond their two-dimensional limitations.

The pitch played to our strengths – the sand-covered carpet providing plenty of velocity for the long direct passes from the back, whether from Adam to Dean, or from Michael and Steve to Leo. The width of the pitch allowed Dean to hug the right wing, receive an almost limitless supply of passes from Adam, and then drill his way in field, with a machine energy, like the Bionic Woman. Leo, meanwhile, stayed more central-left, letting zipped long balls pass him, as he tried to latch on to them with his patented turn-and-panic-shoot philosophy. Without barriers, we got to enjoy the brilliant sensation of taking or defending low-level corners, and watched in hilarious agony, as one Pompey-ite took throw-ins with all the menace and style of a Goal Defence.

With both halves set to run at twenty-five minutes, the first half was dominated by Southampton, Matt bored and frustrated by his defence’s unerring knack to be in the way of Portsmouth’s attack, without barely a hint of any stretch and panic. Matt could only wile away the time dreaming of that mythical bacon butty, on a bed of tortilla chips, in a polystyrene box, that he would soon get to tongue down in ravenous delight. Portsmouth never showed any real attacking nuance in the first half, all their attacks were centralised, exactly where our defenders set up base camp – no point trying to defend half a pitch that size, when the opposition are gonna have to come through you, a bit closer to the goal. The defenders’ close proximity to each other and the goal, coupled with some excellent under the feet tackling, ensured Matt’s hands remained unstung for much of the first half.

Upfront, Dean was hassling every loose ball, defending from the front, whilst Leo was simply riding on the shoulder of the furthest back man, in anticipation of a long pass through the middle, from which he could outpace his marker. Leo’s initial snap-shooting resembled a funfair airgun cowboy pop-up stall, with one desperate to shoot the hick in the outhouse before the door closes, as he cracked shots left, right, straight at the keeper or spooning onto the post. Once he’d twigged there was no time limit, with enough time to draw silhouetted landscapes in the sand, long before the opposition came over the horizon, the goals would eventually come.

The breakthrough came with a Pompey player dancing the holy hell inside the D to give away a cheap penalty, snapped up and packed away like the impulse buyer Dean is. Two goals then followed from Leo, including a nailed on left footer, as the audition for a decent Pompey keeper continued a rotating succession of failures. Michael tucked away another sloppily given away penalty, and would then later barge his way beyond the halfway line to ram home a trademark screamer, just as the Southampton defenders were getting itchy to cross over into enemy territory, and start taking shots.

Whatever the half-time score was, and trying to work out who the current referee was, was like picking out ‘Arry Redknapp in a line-up of cockney wide-boy thieves, we were a comfortable number of goals to the good, with the defence closing off any routes to goal, mainly by inviting the opposition on, and then mugging the ball away from them when they arrived.

The second half saw renewed pressure from Pompey. Their dribbling skills and close range passing was pretty adequate, but lacked penetrative punch. They still remained too close to each other, never stretching our bulky defenders from one width of the pitch to the other, and merely allowed a mass defensive huddle in front of our goal. Once turned over, our counter-attacks were punishingly swift, as Southampton exploited the huge gap i.e. their end of the pitch.

Steve came forward on more than one occasion, trying to justify his missus’ attendance freezing like a popsicle at the corner flag, about a mile away from the action. At the third attempt – having previously shot lame, or been outrun by the goalkeeper coming out of his area! (because “there was no-one else”) – Steve buried the ball home, and his new boots finally lost their cherry innocence.

With the Pompey defence still unable to legislate for the blatantly obvious long ball tactics of Leo’s pace-running, or Dean’s right wing touchline hugging, the two strikers again combined; Leo nipping away a loose ball, from a Dean tackle to slam into the top corner, and followed up with a couple more scorchers (in amongst the howlers he continued to miss) as he stole the ball direct from their centre to blaze unchallenged from his own half to the end zone.

Adam even found the moxy to venture forward to barnstorm another goal for the defenders, and it was probably this camel-breaking straw that everyone but the gaffer had scored, that prompted Matt wanting in on the action, as our keeper came out of his shire-home, on two separate short burst occasions, with Michael taking over the gloves. Hardly weakened by Matt’s Weeble-with-legs routine across the pitch (or how Mr Incredible runs – belly first), the second outing saw him in the nosebleed territory of the opposition half, hassling a defender right on the line, keeping the ball spinning back into play across the D, before being presented with the opportunity to bang his buck. It was anyone’s guess how long it had taken Matt to get that far up the pitch, but the journey back was triumphantly light on the feet.

The desperation, as the time slowly seeped away, was all Southampton’s as they clung onto their clean sheet, like Linus onto his blanket, showing no mercy to gift Portsmouth any sporting consolation. Matt back in goal was still capable of palming a couple of shots over the bar towards the end, but he couldn’t have had an easier time had he locked himself away for a couple of months to grow that ginger goatee of his, and yet it still not be as impressive as the Pompey-ite sporting the super-cool super-beard.

With only a couple of niggles for Steve, baiting opposition players half his age, and supposedly twice his speed, and Adam receiving some knee and knuckle scrapes, the game was played in a good spirit, which is what tends to happen when one team gets beaten out of sight, and the other team do not have the necessary skills to showboat and piss-take from the opposition. As they say, “you got served”.

What made me feel like a 10-year old Russian gymnast being tortured for their sport, was the complete lack of post-match sandwiches that had been provided by our gaffer. Not only did Portsmouth have double the amount of touchline totty (but not the quality, Steve *wink*), but they also had a picnic. What did we have? Oranges? Bacon rolls? Nope. Losers get fed; winners git back on ze buz.

On positive notes, Portsmouth were not so humiliated that talk of a third encounter was immediately dismissed, providing they could actually get together to practise, and the wheels of my car were still there at the end. A brief sojourn into the beautifully plush surroundings of the Centre’s café – replete with bar that wasn’t open, kid’s parties, a wedding function room (book early, folks), and previously mentioned bacon/tortilla chip combo – allowed the team to soak up the emphatic victory on enemy territory, everyone scoring, the clean sheet, the lack (of need) of subs, and just a real sweet way to start Saturday.

Goal Scorers: Dean 1, Leo 6, Michael 2, Steve 1, Adam 1, Matt 1
Match Ratings: Matt 10, Steve 10, Leo 10, Dean 10, Adam 10, Michael 10

21/11/07 9.15pm
Matt, Leo, Dean, Nathan, Adam, Michael
LOST 0-8

In my spare time, when not choking on the ethanol soaked rag that is the burden of being the Mollys’ official PR man and recruitment officer, I like to attend live music gigs, and choke on the stench of dry ice and assholes. Whether it’s getting elbowed in the back and ribs whilst standing at the front of an arena gig with three and a half thousand people trying to meld you into the barrier, or standing on the periphery of a nonsensical circle pit whilst emo teens, desperate for human contact, collide with each other whilst you hope at least one faceplants, it’s all good training. It’s good training to stand your ground, to defend your space, to keep focussed your view, to withstand the buffeting and barging from complete strangers. It’s good training for football matches against the kind of opposition we play against, although I still haven’t quite found a use for skilfully avoiding rubbing my groin area against any women in front of me, in spite of the quite wrongly intoxicating pungent smell of female body odour.

With physical training sorted, the psychological training comes from watching inspirational teams battle the odds. The late kick-off of this brand new Molly season in League One had allowed many of us to soak up the first half of that crucial clash between England and Croatia. Never have my eyes been so violated, and the TV been subjected to such verbal abuse, since my VHS copy of Species II became pieces, after a deserved caught in the middle moment between snap and crack.

It was raining that night - every conceivable god imaginable emptying their pisspots over the edge of the heavens - and standing in front of the wall-mounted TV in Goals, watching the second half of that fateful international encounter, was a welcome respite, even when Fat Frank strolled up to score a penalty without the aid of a deflection, as a result of Defoe’s weighty pocketful pieces of silver causing him to tumble. With our opposition nowhere to be seen, and some genuine concern that Nathan and Adam had crossed county for nothing, we stood there longer, and bore witness to that lanky beanpole edge in the equaliser, and our faith in humanity was restored, the rain eased off, and our ref had bothered to find the opposition.

Such positive frames of mind would soon be hanging crooked, as Legate FC had long been on pitch shooting up, and the delay meant our meaningless warming up was curtailed further. The Molly formation and tactics were equally as worthless. When an old man gets on a bus, you give your seat up for him, you let him sit next to the walking stick sticker. When Steve isn’t around, who’s brave enough to sit in his space, when the bus is empty?

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the end of this report does not exist.