After no Gob report due to illness the Gaffer returns with the news of a 16 - 5 loss to newly promoted team the Local Lads. It was a difficult team performance which saw the return of James and the arrival of another of recruiting sergeant Al's extended family, Rob. despite the newness of these players, it wasn't a bad performance from the Mollie's but we were over matched by a younger, fitter, rougher team with more shooting power up front.
The first five minutes left the Gaffer feeling a lot like i was playing dodgeball rather than football such was the collinder likeness of our defence and the oppositions love of shooting. Fortunately in those early foray's, the opposition were either hitting too straight or too wide leading to a nervy 0-0 after the first five. However this wasn't to last but the Mollie's were able to strike back with some clinical finishing from Gareth. The only other chink of light for us was the opposition goalie having some kind of mental breakdown everytime we hit the back of the net. Clearly, the opposition need to sustain a tight defence or their keeper may not last the season without a stint in the DOP.
For the rest of the team, Al was energetic as ever and all over the pitch, and Leo was left covering the back. James played up front with Gareth and Rob was more of the attacking mindset. This all meant that as we chased the game in the second half, we were left exposed at the back. This (as well as our obviously worse levels of fitness) may have been the reason a 7-4 half time turned into a 16-5 final score. Next week we are again playing Ali Jazeera and we very much need the return of Big Mike. We may have benefitted from the surprise last minute inclusion of Adam and his disciplined defence. Unfortunately, his new shocking working hours meant he could not make even this late a kick off. Either way, the early signs indicate that this season is going to shape up in similar fashion to the last two with us benefitting from default wins and praying for the return of core players to bolster our oft fragile team.
On another note, having read the Goals write up for last nights match i am even more convinced that Local Lads will be promoted as they are clearly receiving impartial treatment from Goals. This in light of receiving the rub of the green last night in some key decisions and them being the focus of the Goals journo's fantasies.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Friday, 9 January 2009
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Gaffers Gob - 7th January 2009 The Hurricanes
After a three week break, we have the welcome and much heralded return of the Gaffer's Gob. This return (as well as the impended relegation to division 1) clearly inspired the team to greater heights of effort and a first on pitch win this season.
The general euphoria surrounding a last gasp, snatch of victory from the jaws of defeat should not hide a performance that was tarnished by a fair amount of ring rust. In the first half it was evident that the team were scared of shooting from anywhere but the edge of the D. It was quite depressing to witness the ball moving from side to side across the pitch with opportunities to go for goal being spurned for the option of a pass that inevitably didn't go to feet. That's not to say the gaffer was immune from the odd slip. His first throw out ended up in the pitch side netting showing an incompetence and height that only Mikes oft maligned shooting could hope to emulate. Alongside the passing, i also felt that last night the defence had a tendency to sit on the D which allowed the opposition time on the ball and to approach the Goal. As we get used to the game again i hope these creases in the performance can get ironed out.
More positively, when Alan gained the cohones to have a shot he struck the ball well and scored the winning goal. Mike was again reasonably assured on the ball and was effort filled in his charging up and down the pitch. Leo and Steve again put in top drawer defensive performances although the match highlight will surely be Leo's drive towards goal from the right wing which was horribly sliced and skied. Gareth put in another trick filled performance and was in evidence wherever the ball was. The Gaffer feels that he was reasonably assured in Goal and did not have to many howlers other than the aforementioned throw out. He is also pleased to have put in a seasonal Kodak moment when clutching the ball out of the air mid dive. However, Leo rather spoiled this by saying i could have shuffled across and got behind it. Obviously i disagree as do the judges who awarded me 9.7!
All in all, it was a good return to winning ways and Steve put in a magic first performance as treasurer. Just to clarify, his appointment as treasurer does not mean that he has been promoted from Vice Gaffer to Gaffer.
The general euphoria surrounding a last gasp, snatch of victory from the jaws of defeat should not hide a performance that was tarnished by a fair amount of ring rust. In the first half it was evident that the team were scared of shooting from anywhere but the edge of the D. It was quite depressing to witness the ball moving from side to side across the pitch with opportunities to go for goal being spurned for the option of a pass that inevitably didn't go to feet. That's not to say the gaffer was immune from the odd slip. His first throw out ended up in the pitch side netting showing an incompetence and height that only Mikes oft maligned shooting could hope to emulate. Alongside the passing, i also felt that last night the defence had a tendency to sit on the D which allowed the opposition time on the ball and to approach the Goal. As we get used to the game again i hope these creases in the performance can get ironed out.
More positively, when Alan gained the cohones to have a shot he struck the ball well and scored the winning goal. Mike was again reasonably assured on the ball and was effort filled in his charging up and down the pitch. Leo and Steve again put in top drawer defensive performances although the match highlight will surely be Leo's drive towards goal from the right wing which was horribly sliced and skied. Gareth put in another trick filled performance and was in evidence wherever the ball was. The Gaffer feels that he was reasonably assured in Goal and did not have to many howlers other than the aforementioned throw out. He is also pleased to have put in a seasonal Kodak moment when clutching the ball out of the air mid dive. However, Leo rather spoiled this by saying i could have shuffled across and got behind it. Obviously i disagree as do the judges who awarded me 9.7!
All in all, it was a good return to winning ways and Steve put in a magic first performance as treasurer. Just to clarify, his appointment as treasurer does not mean that he has been promoted from Vice Gaffer to Gaffer.
Anonymous comments... (The Hurricanes 7/1/09)
Although time is short as I am traveling to sunnier climes tomorrow I'm on a scouting mission to try and trace Carlos. Maderia is my next official stop( for the uneducated and slight less knowledgeable Ronaldo was born on this Island)I might be able to con one his relatives to play for us? Getting back to the more serious issues WE WON had to believe with Matt in goal and Mike chosing to play instead of going into de-tox. God he looked knackered and didn't play very well either to tired to run back or score goals either.Steve unusually was strong in defence And Allan's overall game was roy of the rovers stuff and couldn't be faulted.Leo's effort was excellent however he put on the wrong trainers again and his shots were of rugby worthyness. I know he has seen the surgeon about reducing his instep but a different set of trainers may work and save the NHS a load of money on surgery and improve his self image.Seriously well I have to be at some stage unfortunately. The mollies played well passing the ball to each other and was proud of them but for their excellent goal keeper we would and could have been in double figures. Your faces spoke volumes after the match and I have to eat my words about you liking to lose more than winning. I hope my scouting mission proves fruitful but I couldn't change the team lineup after last nights performance.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
8:9 The Hurricanes 7/1/09 7.00pm
WON 8-7
Matt, Leo2, Steve, Gareth3, Alan3, Mike
Vicariously viewed foreign wars. Celebrity Big Brother. Saints in relegation scrap. Judas Defoe takes another thirty silver pieces. What is so new about this new year, but a spin of the last digit? What differentiates one year to the next, when other anniversaries have more potency, be they birth, death, marriage, fiscal?
Thank heavens then, the unpredictable Mollys have left the mutilated corpse of 2008 to decompose behind a dumpster, and wiped down the passenger seat for the sparkly new and innocent 2009. And we showed her a good time, winning our first contested league match in the same time it takes me to grow out my wispy upper lip hair. So that’s like forever then. An early seven o’clock kick off against mildly agitating weak sauce opponents was the perfect way to ease us back into the cockpit.
At a boardroom level, Steve had been appointed new club treasurer, completing his first audit of the man-purse contents (£42.85, and a manky filling, bean-counting fans). Leo is now expecting rent for the custodianship of the team’s football. That car footwell doesn’t pay for itself y’know.
The three paragraphs above are those that I wrote before the match took place, and I wasted no intimidation tactics telling the team as much, faith rightly placed that we would shake that monkey off our backs, and smash it’s brains out.
I’m again getting ahead of myself, so let’s take it back to the pre-match build-up. Alan and Mike both took the opportunity to mistakenly congratulate Steve on being the new gaffer, much to Matt’s chagrin, and their face-etched disappointment. The injury excuses got an early workout - Steve’s groin having enjoyed a three week break, and Alan’s bad back being selectively recovered for Wednesday football duty. Matt continued to fend off corruption allegations about his boots, hardly assisted by Mike’s tale of CHIP N’ PIN-less thievery from SportsSoccer.
More new leaves and radical changes were to turn and follow, but it was a reassuringly familiar and balanced Molly line-up, on a usual frigid cold pitch, that would do well to deliver the prophecy.
We started shit. A poor first five minutes saw neither team capable of breaching the other’s goal. We looked lethargic and lobotomised. Gareth was dribbling around defenders with all the nuance of a six-year old taking a cycling proficiency test, hitting every bloody cone. Mike looked like a fat blunderer, bundling through the opposition, like someone who’d consumed all his festive food and drink, mashed up, through a beer bong 10 minutes before kick-off. And Alan still couldn’t get his head round when and where he should be taking one touch, two touch, or hitting the fracking ball first time. He wasn’t getting it right.
At the other end, it was business as usual, Steve and Leo, still ace. Leo then subbed himself for a breather, and we conceded two goals. No coincidence.
Gareth pulled one back, as a cheap penalty from a foot in the D was given away, but still we trailed, as Matt got beaten with a menagerie of shot types, as the team shape started dropping to a flat-line so far crammed up our own half’s backside, we could push our belly button out from within. We clearly lacked the fitness for any remote man-marking system, which would’ve extinguished their rather obvious tactic of playing one-twos in off the wingers.
But the most criminal neglect was our painful lack of shooting against their keeper. Alan couldn’t get his shots off quick enough. Gareth couldn’t get past their last defender who patrolled the edge of their D, and Mike for all his worthwhile tackling in the centre, found the ball forever trapped under his feet, and his long-range shooting really stunk.
We got so predictable, that the opposition were able to intercept our back passes to Matt from within the corner, and even made one of their own man-mark Gareth, as the only one seemingly with any skill. We’d win the tackle in the centre of the park, but couldn’t break through into open water because all our outlets were side-on.
So half-time came. We were about 5-3 down by this point - Alan and Gareth only on the balance of probabilities, getting further goals. But there was no panic. Instead there was a constructive team-talk (again something new for the year). We had to play with a higher line when we had the ball. We had to take shots, from the wing to negate their sweeper. Rebound the ball off the back wall. Give them something to keep them occupied in the final third.
And that’s what we did.
There appears to be a new trend to cast aspersions about Leo's shooting, with both Anonymous and Gaffer singling out a particular rugby kick attempt at goal for mention. What they neglected to say was that this shot was after Leo had dragged the team back out of hell with a bat of a lash, after being teed up by Gareth on the right wing, that flew through their keeper. And after his air balloon kick, there then followed his patented intercepted ground volley from the keeper's slow-ish throw-out, that Leo one-touched back into the net, which teased a clearly audible yelp of "YES!" out of Matt, as the Mollys drew level at 7-7.
With Leo pressing forward on the right to support the strikers, Alan was finally getting his sums right on the left, and the correct correlation between the distance from goal, and the number of touches permissible, was provoking some high calibre shooting, as the link-up play with Gareth was starting to pay off. The team were starting to win tackles, then keep hold of the second ball, then produce some forward passing, that made the opposition chase back. The number of times the defence, Steve especially, poked the ball away back up the field, gave the team multiple counter-attack opportunities, that only Mike's irascibly inconsistent skills were putting to grief. Gareth also smashed another goal, a tight-angled effort into the corner, as he finally started to drag defenders out of his firing line.
Matt was getting all good in the second half, and was less inclined to allow the opposition to pass shots around him, and more inclined to put his back into it - drawing flashbulb fire as he arched into the night sky Free Willy-style to pluck a ball out, and then managed to hit the ground to shave a ball onto the post, and then react uncharacteristically quick, to stop any spillage leaking over the line.
Steve took the last few minutes off with an injury that would require "Deep Heat on my todger", forcing Leo to hang on in there having almost hit the wall. Alan buried the deserved winning shot, with a sweeping outside foot, as the ball cuddled the net, with barely two minutes on the clock, and the team held on, as the whistle blew to signal "about fucking time", and the team walked away from the beautiful wreckage without a scratch. Sure the team were rusty, lacking a sure touch in the first half, but showed great skills of adaptation to turn around a game against opponents that were really performing the most basic of skills from the Football For Dummies handbook.
So finally the date of 10th September 2008, can be dragged and dropped to the trash can, and the 7th January 2009 can be the new date of the last time the Mollys won a match. For another 5 months. Nothing really changes.
Matt, Leo2, Steve, Gareth3, Alan3, Mike
Vicariously viewed foreign wars. Celebrity Big Brother. Saints in relegation scrap. Judas Defoe takes another thirty silver pieces. What is so new about this new year, but a spin of the last digit? What differentiates one year to the next, when other anniversaries have more potency, be they birth, death, marriage, fiscal?
Thank heavens then, the unpredictable Mollys have left the mutilated corpse of 2008 to decompose behind a dumpster, and wiped down the passenger seat for the sparkly new and innocent 2009. And we showed her a good time, winning our first contested league match in the same time it takes me to grow out my wispy upper lip hair. So that’s like forever then. An early seven o’clock kick off against mildly agitating weak sauce opponents was the perfect way to ease us back into the cockpit.
At a boardroom level, Steve had been appointed new club treasurer, completing his first audit of the man-purse contents (£42.85, and a manky filling, bean-counting fans). Leo is now expecting rent for the custodianship of the team’s football. That car footwell doesn’t pay for itself y’know.
The three paragraphs above are those that I wrote before the match took place, and I wasted no intimidation tactics telling the team as much, faith rightly placed that we would shake that monkey off our backs, and smash it’s brains out.
I’m again getting ahead of myself, so let’s take it back to the pre-match build-up. Alan and Mike both took the opportunity to mistakenly congratulate Steve on being the new gaffer, much to Matt’s chagrin, and their face-etched disappointment. The injury excuses got an early workout - Steve’s groin having enjoyed a three week break, and Alan’s bad back being selectively recovered for Wednesday football duty. Matt continued to fend off corruption allegations about his boots, hardly assisted by Mike’s tale of CHIP N’ PIN-less thievery from SportsSoccer.
More new leaves and radical changes were to turn and follow, but it was a reassuringly familiar and balanced Molly line-up, on a usual frigid cold pitch, that would do well to deliver the prophecy.
We started shit. A poor first five minutes saw neither team capable of breaching the other’s goal. We looked lethargic and lobotomised. Gareth was dribbling around defenders with all the nuance of a six-year old taking a cycling proficiency test, hitting every bloody cone. Mike looked like a fat blunderer, bundling through the opposition, like someone who’d consumed all his festive food and drink, mashed up, through a beer bong 10 minutes before kick-off. And Alan still couldn’t get his head round when and where he should be taking one touch, two touch, or hitting the fracking ball first time. He wasn’t getting it right.
At the other end, it was business as usual, Steve and Leo, still ace. Leo then subbed himself for a breather, and we conceded two goals. No coincidence.
Gareth pulled one back, as a cheap penalty from a foot in the D was given away, but still we trailed, as Matt got beaten with a menagerie of shot types, as the team shape started dropping to a flat-line so far crammed up our own half’s backside, we could push our belly button out from within. We clearly lacked the fitness for any remote man-marking system, which would’ve extinguished their rather obvious tactic of playing one-twos in off the wingers.
But the most criminal neglect was our painful lack of shooting against their keeper. Alan couldn’t get his shots off quick enough. Gareth couldn’t get past their last defender who patrolled the edge of their D, and Mike for all his worthwhile tackling in the centre, found the ball forever trapped under his feet, and his long-range shooting really stunk.
We got so predictable, that the opposition were able to intercept our back passes to Matt from within the corner, and even made one of their own man-mark Gareth, as the only one seemingly with any skill. We’d win the tackle in the centre of the park, but couldn’t break through into open water because all our outlets were side-on.
So half-time came. We were about 5-3 down by this point - Alan and Gareth only on the balance of probabilities, getting further goals. But there was no panic. Instead there was a constructive team-talk (again something new for the year). We had to play with a higher line when we had the ball. We had to take shots, from the wing to negate their sweeper. Rebound the ball off the back wall. Give them something to keep them occupied in the final third.
And that’s what we did.
There appears to be a new trend to cast aspersions about Leo's shooting, with both Anonymous and Gaffer singling out a particular rugby kick attempt at goal for mention. What they neglected to say was that this shot was after Leo had dragged the team back out of hell with a bat of a lash, after being teed up by Gareth on the right wing, that flew through their keeper. And after his air balloon kick, there then followed his patented intercepted ground volley from the keeper's slow-ish throw-out, that Leo one-touched back into the net, which teased a clearly audible yelp of "YES!" out of Matt, as the Mollys drew level at 7-7.
With Leo pressing forward on the right to support the strikers, Alan was finally getting his sums right on the left, and the correct correlation between the distance from goal, and the number of touches permissible, was provoking some high calibre shooting, as the link-up play with Gareth was starting to pay off. The team were starting to win tackles, then keep hold of the second ball, then produce some forward passing, that made the opposition chase back. The number of times the defence, Steve especially, poked the ball away back up the field, gave the team multiple counter-attack opportunities, that only Mike's irascibly inconsistent skills were putting to grief. Gareth also smashed another goal, a tight-angled effort into the corner, as he finally started to drag defenders out of his firing line.
Matt was getting all good in the second half, and was less inclined to allow the opposition to pass shots around him, and more inclined to put his back into it - drawing flashbulb fire as he arched into the night sky Free Willy-style to pluck a ball out, and then managed to hit the ground to shave a ball onto the post, and then react uncharacteristically quick, to stop any spillage leaking over the line.
Steve took the last few minutes off with an injury that would require "Deep Heat on my todger", forcing Leo to hang on in there having almost hit the wall. Alan buried the deserved winning shot, with a sweeping outside foot, as the ball cuddled the net, with barely two minutes on the clock, and the team held on, as the whistle blew to signal "about fucking time", and the team walked away from the beautiful wreckage without a scratch. Sure the team were rusty, lacking a sure touch in the first half, but showed great skills of adaptation to turn around a game against opponents that were really performing the most basic of skills from the Football For Dummies handbook.
So finally the date of 10th September 2008, can be dragged and dropped to the trash can, and the 7th January 2009 can be the new date of the last time the Mollys won a match. For another 5 months. Nothing really changes.
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