Gaffers Gob 4th February 09 - Ali Jazeera

On another cold winters night where it literally snowed for half the match, The Mollie's (in light of last season) unbelievably achieved a 66% win ratio with a 15 - 10 win over Ali Jazeera.

What made this even more impressive was the makeshift quality of our side after the enforced absences of Alan, James, Big Mike, Steve along with the arguably more important absence of ever present cheerleader, Don. Regular subs Adam and Little Mike were also unavailable for various reason. All this heralded the return of Robbie and the introduction of his mate Dan. In true Mollie's fashion Dan was given the task of ploughing up the snow covered left whilst Leo used his seniority to choose the somewhat more clear right with Gareth roaming in the centre. Robbie, labouring under the confidence of Leo had the sweeping role at the bottom of the diamond.

After the rough tactics of last weeks opponents, it was nice to enjoy playing a team with a similar level of skill and cleanliness when challenging for the ball. Gareth enjoyed acres of space up front seemingly able to lose his markers with impunity. This allowed the Gaffer to utilise his long throw skills and avoid the midfield altogether. Both Gareth and Leo scored Goals from this tactic. Dan also scored twice on his debut. After taking a while to gain the confidence to shoot, he scored his brace in the second half with a couple of cleanly finished side footed efforts.

Defensively, Robbie played as if he had not had any time off from his duties. He was up with the pace all game and played with a certain tirelessness in defence frequently getting in last minutes legs and feet to block shots. Gareth and Leo took on attacking duties and Gareth put in a performance reminiscent of when he was a sports college student. He looked fitter than he has in a long time and struck the ball well returning with 9 goals. Leo appeared to enjoy his role in attack and was a constant menace to the opposition defence. Although less accurate than Gareth, Leo also did well scoring 4. The gaffer was pretty pleased with his game and put in a fair number of good saves. Once again this was tempered by my conceding a few soft ones through legs and hands etcetera. More importantly.

All in all, it was a good all round performance in far from pleasant conditions. For the first time in the gaffers memory at least, we played when it was snowing but at least the weather meant that we had to keep running to avoid catching pneumonia.

Next week is a 7pm kick off against Gareth's old colleagues from sports soccer. His scouting report is that they are young but a bit rubbish! Touch wood he is right and our win ratio can hit 75%. All statistics supplied by Jeff Stelling.