The Molly Maguires: November 2009

Friday, 27 November 2009

26th November – Cunning Stunts – defeat 10-2

The return of the Gob

After a long lay of many months, and the associated holiday of Lungboy who confessed that he has been “sorting my shit out”, I decided that I should dust of my typewriter and actually ensure that an article was on the decidedly inactive Mollies blog.

Despite the lay off, the same old problems still affect the Mollies. All told last night was a decent defensive performance against (cue sense of déjà vu) a younger, fitter, quicker and more skilful team. And this is at the root of the continued bottom feeding of the Mollies. We are currently sat at the bottom (*alongside and unassigned team) of our division on zero points with only the upcoming two games against unassigned teams to gift us six points. It’s like Wednesday all over again.

To be fair we have played the top two teams in the last two weeks conceding 21 goals and scoring 9. The majority of the team felt that this was a good showing against two teams that on paper should have completely mugged us. The Gob would agree with this but the red marks dotting my body from being a human dart board show my wish that our marking and tackling would improve just a bit. We have had a tendency in the last couple of weeks to allow attackers to get behind us and move into the corners all unawares. This has led to a number of crosses attacking the top of the D which in previous were infrequent occurrences.

Not so much the week before, but definitely last night, we couldn’t hit a barn door in anger. We have improved our ability to hit the ball with the introduction of Rob and Nathan. Also with the return of Lungboy there was a sense of optimism that we actually our strongest side available with an ability to jeopardise the opposition goal. Strangely, with the glut of shooting ability available, we could only aim at the back board rather than the net. It was not as if the opposition keeper was brilliant (as he threw one of our two goals into his own net). Had we been only slightly more accurate the score line would likely have been much more flattering. It is positive that James has been scoring much more regularly of late but with greasy pitches for the last two weeks, long shots should have allowed a following attacker to hit a rebound or saved shot.

Also the issue of substitutions reared it ugly head once again. An apoplectic Steve chiding the rest of the team for only allowing him 4 minutes of pitch time in the first half. However, a slightly different and amused take would be that “Chopper” was defending with muscular approach employed by your average prop forward and would likely result in a sin binning. As it stands his second half performance had him crawling of the pitch on his hands and knees before coming off, but the Gob was able to see him grabbing shirts and irritating the opposition attackers with great regularity. No doubt this led to the opposition throwing the ball away on our free kick in the last minute when they were 10-2 up. Sportsmanlike indeed.

All told, we benefited from the return of Leo after a 4 week lay off. However, with only one game in December, who knows what the stamina of our band of oldish men will be like come the new year. When we no doubt play another, younger, fitter, quicker and more skilful team once again.

Thursday, 26 November 2009

3:4 Cunning Stunts 26/11/09 7pm

LOST 10-2
Matt, Leo, Steve, Alan, James, Rob, Nathan

So it's been many months since I last wrote a report. A combination of writer's block, Blockbuster DVD watching; and just a general despair at our constant defeats, nulled any enthusiasm I had for writing about our inadequacies all the time. Yeah, that's right, I got bored of slagging people off.

Times have changed and the squad has again metamorphosised into another beast of constituent parts, with Rob now a seasoned regular, Nathan a regular sessional, Richard an enthusiastic rookie, and Gareth an occasional cameo-maker. It was therefore a bizzare start to the evening to hear Matt dismay at having too many people in the squad, and his selection headaches, easily able to conjure at least nine players in the right circumstances, with feeder club Skinner FC now fully integrated into the set up.

Despite the economic crisis, as beared witness by my hometown's ex-Woolworths soon to be a f*cking 99p Store, the price of the match fee remains at a constant high, as treasurer Steve balances the books after the man-purse's recent financial beating. Old Steve Grumpton was in a tetchy mood from the off, pouring scorn on the notion of getting drunk on one's birthday, closer to death, loss of innocence and all that, and would later unleash a full on strop at the indiscliplined substituting that resulted in him playing only four minutes of the first half (by Sir Alex's stopwatch anyway), whilst others in the team were moving so lamely, that slugs could crawl up their backsides.

In the spirit of mutual respect, Matt had a pretty faultless game. Only conceding 10 goals against the top side, and making enough genuine close-range efforts, that Leo had no cause to shout obscenities at him, whilst the Molly's latest touchline totty, Mrs Matt watched on, with her handbag at the ready.

There was a minute's silence for that bloke who used to ref games, and play in games, here at Goals, which deserved the same respect as that German keeper who committed suicide by putting himself in front of a train. As Rob so eloquently put it, within ear shot of the ref, to paraphrase, "He's the guy that had an argument with his missus, and threw himself out of the car, smashing his brains in". Whilst heavily under the influence of alcohol.

We too played like our brains had been smeared all over the concrete (see the French film Dobermann for an excellent sequence where a character gets his face scraped along the road from a moving car). There is absolutely no discipline in formation. This isn't rocket science - James up front, Alan on the left, Nathan or Rob on the right to press forward from deep; Leo or Steve hanging in defence. What the f*ck Nathan or Rob are doing as last man when their goalkeeper begins their initial move bears no credibility. If they were hanging back to catch a breather, then they deserved Steve's wrath. In fairness, when Steve was at the back he was shockingly slow, getting caught out, as attackers ran in behind him, and putting in enough professional fouls to make Thierry Henry look like a saintly frog-eating onion-chomper. Like Thierry, Steve admitted that he was a bloody CHEAT.

Rob's powerful shooting was being undermined by his trigger, a left foot so repugnantly off-target, that he could dip his toe into the sea, and still miss the water. James' two-too-many-touch shooting saw him rapidly and regularly closed down, and we do seem to be the only team in this or any league, whose only option from the keeper is the long ball to the front man, off the wall. I dare us, knowing that i'm going to get the most shit from it, to short ball EVERY keeper throwout, barring the obvious direct scoring oppo.

Free-kicks were their usual slow and painful and inaccurate nonsense. Our shooting barely troubled their keeper, and some gilt-edged chances with wide-open goals, when we did manage to fox their keeper, became guilt-ridden f*ck-ups as they went stupidly wide, or hit the bar.

Leo's return was only half a blessing, as he was getting in the interceptions, but failing to take control of the second touch, resulting in the top-heavy opposition attack still profiting from a now split-leg, static defence, summed up superbly with him edging a long pass away from a protruding attacker, only to slither it past a wrong footed Matt for his first own goal of the season.

The opposition were the usual cretins, arguing the toss on every little foul supposedly committed against them (complaints only justified against Steve), and back-heeling the ball away from our free-kick when they were 10-2 up with a minute to go. Congratulations dickwad, your mother raised you well.

There's no improvement in the way this team plays, just a random series of events that gets thrown together, that occasionally produces a positive result through sheer luck. We have so many glory hunters in a team that really, by transference, wouldn't be capable of hunting for porn on the internet. Just once, I'd like to see some positional discipline, even if it's just for the bloody kick-off. The right wing has enough space in it to the build The West Wing. Get over there.

Rant over.