The Granite 23/7/08 9.15pm (6-7)

WON 19-11
Matt, Steve1, Leo3, Adam, Nathan8, Gareth7

Ah, The Granite, the perennial illegitimate orphans of Wednesday night. This would be our sixth game against the multi-coloured swap shirt shop, and a meaningful test of the Mollys’ recent resurgence. Not since our first encounter, when they got done over 8-5 have we ever looked like grabbing three points. Past encounters have had me noting ".Wearing yellow, like the diuretic shit stains they were, (and the odd white, and orange) The Granite are the typical archetypal wanky team, where winning is everything, all ref calls are challenged, every mistake is howled at, every variation of a foul is performed” and “As usual, opposition who seem to take a significant lead against us, always get frustrated when they aren’t slaughtering us, or kicking us when we’re down". All of which still rings true today.

It surprised absolutely no-one that we'd only seen a couple of their motley crew in the bar, and that they eventually emerged onto the pitch late (yes even Adam arrived before the opposition; yes even Nathan arrived before Adam; yes even the Apocalypse arrived before Nathan) with just five players, including a keeper dressed in all white, and some limp dick dressed in an all red Goals-branded kit. That sound you're hearing is ringing. Of bell-ends. Matt should take lessons that a team of imbred cretins can be assembled literally on the night of the match, no doubt with the 'smell of young boy' inducements. How they continually get away with fielding a piecemeal line-up of other teams' players is a question only 'take the money and to hell with it' Goals can answer.

But you know what, I don't think the core of The Granite is at fault. The bedrock of the team, i.e. both of them, are probably nice guys, but they have no friends, and go trawling bars for the biggest, baddest wankstas so they can be in a winning team, and feel big about themselves. Well f*ck you all. You had this humiliation coming you arrogant ******* ***** ***** ** ***** **** [edited for content]

Before one of the most stunning displays of total football any Molly fan will ever see (Don said so), there was the small matter of racially aggravated threatening behaviour beforehand. The teams playing before us were clearly having a ding-dong hard challenging crunch tackling match, and as with all such matches, dishing it out and taking it, are two different things; so a sin-binning for one player resulted in a sequence of ref abuse from "Polish c*nt" to "speak English" to "look at me like that and I'll hit ya", which then resulted in a red card, and the match being abandoned due to a shortage of players. More "fuck off" abuse followed - sadly perennial favourites like "you're taking all our jobs", and "go back to your own country" didn't given a look in - and the match ball being thrown into the petrol station. I did like the fact that one of the abusers apologised, to us watching, for their bad language. Thanks sh*tbag, my sensibilities had been suitably perturbed by your racist comments, and the hassle fear of writing a witness statement should you have decided to gang-rape the ref, but your twisted logic apology to me makes things better.

Anyway back to the match, and whilst a small panic had ensued when Matt's incorrectly set watch forced panic calls to Don about where Gareth was, the team were on the pitch and warming up for an optimal amount of time before the match would kick-off. Nathan had been suitably stung by Leo's fair and constructive criticism about his Andy Cole-like shooting (about nine for nowt) the previous week, like calling his baby the puggest of ugliest, and so set about restoring his mojo with a barrage of shot practise against Matt. Leo was also in shot practise mode, managing a couple of long range low hugging goal drives that endangered no trees whatsoever. And of course all of this was relevant groundwork to the match that would follow.

At the heart of this victory were all the key elements of a good footballing side, running at a premium level. Accurate low-level shooting; disciplined move-as-one formation; constant man-marking system; high callibre interceptions and tackles; near ideal fitness levels; a confidence and desire to win. This was the kind of high end formula that even the mysterious adonymous writer would be proudly sucking on -"indaviduls don whin marches, teems doh". Racist? Moi?

Nathan started the footballing abuse with a homing missile of a whip shot that didn't touch the sides, and gave him the perfect 100% record start that had eluded him all of last week. Spearheading the attack as a focal point whilst Gareth sat back to sweep forward, everything Nathan initially shot was impregnating the net with a 6 for 6 consistency, the bottom corner being curled into like a old man’s Speedos.

The opposition’s focal point – redboy – was on his knees, coughing lungs up after barely five minutes, which he should’ve expected playing at least his second consecutive match that night. But he was to be their main threat, if he wasn’t so one-footed as to be as embarrassingly predictable as a two-headed coin. The psychological fun to be had by us shouting out loud which way he was going to go was interactive to the max.

The game initially shifted toward The Granite, who led 2-1 and then 3-2, before we at some point pulled it to 5-5, in the sort of comeback that Ron Atkinson will never achieve. We were man-marking, tracking back, and dropping goal side in the fluent language of football. Even Adam managed to find an opposite number who moved forward at the same pace he moved back. Our counter-attack bursts when their plays broke down were like gunfire over Iraqi airspace; and we earned that right by a marking system so intimidating, they couldn’t play the ball out of defence without getting caught up in a Molly foot or two.

It wasn’t all sweetness and light. We occasionally made mistakes – Leo’s first shot was his now expected gravity defying ballooner over the barrier, clearly on a secret mission to justify Goals’ registration fee by eliminating as many match balls as possible. Matt suffered the ignominy of getting called up on a high throw out from his D, from which an impossible to defend free-kick was awarded right on the line, scored and allowed, to the utter disgust of the Mollys.

Still, we’d previously seen a penalty awarded against Steve for such a blatant foot in the area, he may as well have been wearing Krusty’s shoes, but the real clown was their penalty taker. Clearly not entirely au fait with the one-step-shot rules of the challenge, he initially started so far behind the ball, he must’ve thought he was Carlton Palmer. When he did hit it, he spazzed it wide with some outside foot nonsense that even John Terry could’ve put away.

By the start of the second half we were so far in front, that even Adam’s long-range toe-pokes looked like good, worthy efforts, and not at all like pretentious, charitable aah-never-minds. Whilst they were attacking us like Christian Bale assaults his mom and sis, we were blowing them away like a hole in an airplane hull. Leo was stealing goals by intercepting mediocre passing in their own half. Gareth was setting up his own goals, cannoning an near-miss effort off the back wall, and then running through his markers to saddle home the re-bound at close range. Nathan actually managed to shoot and not hit the two defenders in front of him, as he engineered some space by dummy-stuttering his effort past a blinded keeper. And Steve capped off a display of hard graft, and turf-munching by finishing off some superb wing-play from Gareth and Nathan. The old sailor even had the cheek to take the opposition’s free-kick for them, unnoticed by the ref, and then almost managed to barrel down onto his own ‘pass’ at the other end.

There was no second half collapse, we continued to plough through them like Gang Bang vol. 12. There was no ‘kicking’ wing this time, we were too elusive, 6 years imprisonment worthy elusive. Not surprisingly, redboy was enraged by some off-hand treatment by Leo (i.e. he lost the ball like baby lost his bottle) to throw some vague threats of violence into the dark night. Seriously - if you want to call out someone for a serious attack on your delicate sensibilities, have the decency to stand still, ignore the ongoing play, and whinge directly to the offender.

All of which made our stunning victory all the more sweeter, like a naked Angelina Jolie covered in black treacle, sprinkled with sugar and crushed Flakes; but without the pregnancy, or Brad just wanting to watch.

There is a time to set aside old rivalries; to acknowledge sportsmanship; to bury hatchets, and forgive and forget. There is a time to graciously accept victory, knowing defeat is but a random ringer line-up away. This is not that time.