Dynamo Diabolical 10-18 FC Eagle Knight Megasharks

I'll begin before the match. I woke up bright and early to prepare for the game by playing some cut-throat games of Fifa 11, the highlight being a 3-0 away win against Sheffield Wednesday. If we played like that, there'd be no problem in the evening's league fixture. Dan, Tom and Richard had confirmed that they'd be playing on facebook but Jamie was reporting in with a note from the physio to tell me he'd got a severe case of Other Commitments. A text from Nick said he'd be about as well. This left Manny to contact, but as usual his phone was off and he was lying in a pool of alcohol somewhere. Eventually he got in contact so we were six players to the good.

Before the match Tom and I invested in new boots, purchases that would be sure to consolidate the skill missing from the previous fixture. But this was a league fixture, no mere friendly! Apparently the team we were playing against had come somewhere near the bottom of the division the previous season, so we were definitely in for an easier ride.

The match kicked off with Manny nursing his hangover on the bench, Dan and myself in defence, Richard in goal, and Nick and Tom in midfield. Who needs forwards? Shockingly we held off for about three minutes before going 1-0 down, as a massive bloke in a Liverpool shirt powered a shot in past the hapless Richard, who flapped at it like a moth against the libidinous light of abstract expressionism in the mid-20th century. (Simile stolen from http://www.artslant.com/par/articles/show/16742?print=1 because it seems to make no sense at all, much like the fact that we bother fielding a team.) Still, all was not lost as we equalised after a nice team goal involving everyone running forward hopefully, with Nick applying the finishing touch. What this told us was that their keeper wasn't very good, as he really should have saved it.

The match continued, and after about ten minutes we were only 4-2 down (Dan grabbed the second goal, I think). We brought Manny on and conceded again. Correlation doesn't imply causation, though, so we'll let him off. They subbed off their best player for a shorter, stockier guy and we pulled back a few goals before half time to go in at the break at 9-5.

This match was very different. It was possible for us to win if we cut out the silly errors, like committing everyone forward every time our keeper had the ball, or not communicating with each other at all. We'd already equalised our all time scoring record and we hadn't conceded nineteen quite yet. The aim was now to limit damage and hopefully grab enough goals back to get a draw, or at least a loss that wasn't horribly embarrassing. Some banter ensued with the other team who told us how awful they were and that the league was considerably easier this year because the top teams had all been shoved up a division. Nice blokes.

The second half kicked off with Tom off the field having a breather, but our plan of not letting in stupid goals sort of fell apart as we let in four more instantly, only scoring once in the process. They were really dreadful goals, all of them coming about as a result of a cross to a man by himself in the middle of the area. Nick scored a penalty though, given for some completely unfathomable reason. The keeper should have saved it. God knows what he was thinking. After a while I took a break and stood at the sidelines shouting meaningless diatribe at our players vaguely hoping that it'd inspire someone to do something. It did, and we got a further two goals back, meaning the deficit was only 13-8. I came back on, missed two easy shots, gave away a penalty, and laid their best finisher off for an easy goal. 15-8. Things didn't get much better and we were tired. Dan, Richard and I were all bleeding. I gave away a few more free kicks for being needlessly aggressive, but we didn't concede from them due to a wonderful double save from our goalie.

Dan and Tom got a goal each towards the end but we also gave away three more silly ones. Still, 18-10 is a vast improvement on last week and we mustn't be too hard on ourselves. We'd scored ten, let in less than twenty, and only given away a singular penalty.

Match ratings:

Dan: good in attack, set up more goals than anyone else, and constantly put players through. Scored twice, and gets a solid 7/10.

Manny: You could tell he was hungover, as even when something went right he looked shocked. 4/10.

Me: Pretty awful, although I'm going to give myself a 5/10 so that I'm not the worst on the pitch. To justify that, I held the ball up and won a fair few tackles.

Nick: Best on the pitch for the second week in a row. Scored six, blocked a lot at the back and was generally all over the place. 8/10.

Richard: Fairly solid considering he had no gloves and had also been out drinking the night before. Pulled off some saves but also made the odd howler. 5/10.

Tom: Decent in attack, good vision for passes and also scored a couple. 6/10.

We're almost certainly bottom of the league, but someone might have lost by more than eight, I suppose. We can hope. Training sessions will commence on Wednesday, and a lot of practice is needed tracking runs and not running backwards at the speed of continental drift.