Northside Monash 0, Lane Cove West 3.

3-0 seems a lot different when you’re on the winning end of it. Our last win (v Berowra) had also been 3-0 - on July 10 (also our last goal); and, oddly we’d lost 3-0 the week before that, too. And we’ve now played seven games in a row in which not more than one of the two teams has scored. It’s a funny game!

Today was one of those games that doesn’t bring out the best in us. Hot (again); and opponents whom we should have buried early on, before going on to play champagne football. Instead, we struggled a bit, and moaned a bit, and wilted quite a lot: stale beer, rather than champagne! Despite a very early goal, we weren’t really sure of winning until near the end. But, we did stick at it, and in the end came good. (Well, maybe not good: but OK!).

This was not so much a game of two halves, but a pitch of two halves. One end of Koola had evidently had a localised monsoon, just before we got there. We won the toss and decided to defend the mud second (on the principle that the sun would surely dry it out; but it didn’t). And it looked like a good decision when, after only about 5 minutes (all of it, us attacking) one of Peter’s long range specials skidded on the wet, beat the keeper, and went in off the right-hand post.

Floodgates open, it seemed. But no. Try as we might we couldn’t fashion real chances, despite monopolising the ball. Their keeper played a blinder, and too often we put the ball in his grasp. Or the ball would stick in the mud just as the telling pass was to be made. Or something.

As the half wore on our opponents seemed to take heart, and – worryingly – to start attacks of their own. True, they never got closer than corners, or Dave W rushing out to smother through balls, but it wasn’t in the script for them to be doing any of this: they were supposed to lie down in the mud.

1-0 at half-time wasn’t nearly enough, and I, for one, had a slight feeling of impending doom. I could feel a day coming on like the one when we played against 9 men (one of whom got voted off the island by his colleagues at half-time and went home); and we lost to the 8 men. Steve was probably there, too: it was about 20 years ago, but it’s not the sort of thing you ever recover from, really.

And though we carried on attacking – me taking the ball half way up the field then running out of puff in the area; Dave L blasting high from just outside; countless other chances that came to nothing – the doom almost came about. NSM’s only really good shot of the day was a really good one, rocketing straight under the middle of the bar, but somehow Dave W tipped it over: fantastic save! 1-1 with 20 minutes to go was not where we wanted to be.

But then things finally turned our way: two opportunistic shots from man-of-the match Dave B (Martin C second & Mark S third) rewarding his running all day.

But there was still time for comedy. Tony (welcome back) sliced the ball over our bar. At the other end, for once, the keeper dropped the ball and Mark S saw the goal wide in front of him, but somehow managed to push the ball wide. And for the second week in a row, I tried to pass when I should have shot: this time from close to the near post. That’s it for the season now: no more selflessness! Then right at the death, I managed to miss a cross from Dave B that just needed a toe, or a knee, or anything to get it over the line.

My musing about the Pope last week reminds me that when the over-35 league first started one of our players said we should all agree to carry on playing at least until there’s a Pope younger than we are. At the time, it seemed a long way from being possible, but now…I’m not so sure! Not that we agreed we had to stop then, of course; just that we couldn’t stop before!

So – all square for the season so far. Next week Berowra at Blackman.

MARK BRYANT