Lane Cove West 3, Northside Monash 5.

6 May 2006, Blackman

Portugal 5, Korea 3, 1966 World Cup finals, Goodison Park, Everton.

Now there was a classic game! Minnows Korea 3-0 up in 25 minutes (just as Northside were today). And then (just like today) a comeback: Eusebio scored four & Augusto one, and 5-3 it finished.

But we didn’t quite follow all the Portugal script. After going 3-0 down we made it worse - conceding another before halftime. Then Mark S scored two (to Eusebio’s four), and it was them, not us, that got the last goal. Today, the team that was 3-0 up finally won.

Blackman, again, hot dry; and already the pitch is a problem: very uneven at the far end: probably no coincidence that 7 of the 8 goals were scored at that end. Since it looks like we’ll play at least 11 of our 18 games there, we’ll just have to get used to it.

We started well enough against a team that we’d beaten twice last year and again in the pre-seasons. Matt & Mark S & I all looked dangerous.

Everything was going well until, suddenly, everything changed. Firstly we brought on the two subs – John & Jon – but the bizarre events of the next few minutes were not their fault. It’s all a horrible blur now, but three times in about 5 minutes Northside sliced through our mid-field, and then our backs, leaving a player one-on-one with Tony & scoring. Literally, my 3 successive touches in this period were to take kick-offs!

Stunned we were, as might be imagined. The only good news was that there was ages left, and having seen how easy it is to score 3, surely there was hope for us. (It had been one of those periods that make you wonder why games don’t routinely finish 11-10. Just as, seeing how easily George Best could go through a defence, you wondered why he didn’t score 6 every game)

So we soldiered on in hope, and seemed to be making headway (to mix ones metaphors a little), when, incredibly, another disaster swept over us. Jon Ball did a great job of tackling in our area, took the ball to the side-line, and swept a pass to me in the centre circle. I was all alone and thinking through the 10 options of what to do next, but made the fundamental error of not, in the meantime, securing the ball. It went past me to a defender who pushed it up on our left. But no danger seemed to ensue: Eric had the attacker covered out wide, and, anyway, Tony was at the near post. But, somehow, both fail-safe’s failed! The shot came over; Tony thought it was missing, until there it was: nestling in the net. Even then, it seemed that only Tony & the scorer knew what had happened & Stuart, the ref, had to enquire. We wondered later what would have happened if we had tried to claim that it had gone through the side netting. Mistakes do happen… a ref at Chelsea once awarded a goal against Ipswich, thinking it had hit the stanchion in the goal & bounced out, when what it had actually hit was the advertising sign next to the goal. But today, the truth was agreed to, and the ugly consequence was a 0-4 deficit at half-time.

The half-time talk centred on starting again, holding onto the ball, and slowing things down. In truth, the latter didn’t seem to be what brought our come-back, as the game resumed at the same frantic pace. But now the bumpy & dusty patch of midfield that had seemed to belong to Northside in the first half became all ours. For 20 minutes, our opponents hardly touched the ball, and, though we didn’t score our three goals quite as quickly as theirs, it was all breathtaking stuff.

First a cross (or corner?) that seemed to be swinging out for a goal-kick beyond the far right post was nodded back by Dave (who had done really well to get there). Equally quick-thinking by Mark S saw his snap-shot hit the underside of the bar on its way in: 1-4, and we were on our way.

Not long later, Mark S made a run forward, as I had the ball in mid-field. I though he might have gone too far (or I had delayed too long) as he seemed to be beyond the defender, but I chipped it to him anyway, and he lashed it into the net again. Before the restart, lineman Scott called the ref for a conference, which was a bit of a worry, as Northside were still appealing for off-side. But it turned out that he was merely reporting abuse by defenders; and (as Scott later told us) Mark was, indeed, ahead of the nearest defender, but another on the far side was further back, so the goal was clearly valid.

So now it was 2-4, and we were running on adrenaline and exhilaration: this is how life is supposed to be!

But wait, there’s more! Matt skillfully carved out space to shoot from the right, and beat the keeper. The ball slowed towards the line as a defender trundled back. His efforts to stop it (with me in attendance) were ineffective and it was now clearly over the line. I say “clearly”, but only he and I knew that, and (unlike Martin Peters in the 1966 final) I didn’t turn away in celebration: instead I whacked it into the net. If I was a proper striker I’d claim the goal, of course, but Matt’s it definitely was.

So we were up to 3-4, there were 20 minutes to go, and Northside were (not unreasonably) panicking.

But we never looked as good again. What went wrong? I hear you cry. Well, I read a wonderful new cliché last week: “a lot of football is played above the shoulders”! And (in the absence of the sports psychologist) my theory of what happened next was that we eased off: in the back of our minds, we’d done the hard part; we’d come three goals back, and there was just the one to go; we were going to score that (no problem), then get the winner and leave for a glorious celebration. So, we lost a bit of bite, and more to the point (as can happen after a bout of adrenaline and exhilaration), we were buggered!

Steve B and Matt went off injured, so Davoud entered the fray with fresh legs and new angles of attack.

But somewhere around here, Northside got back their belief. They began again to control the ball and mount attacks. Not once but, almost incredibly, twice Dave headed the ball right from under our crossbar, with Tony beaten. We still ran and ran, but no longer were we camped in their half. So it was not surprising (but still a jolt) when Northside, not us, scored the vital next goal. Another one-on-one and another clean shot: 3-5, and goodnight.

Not that we gave up: there was still time to run up and down quite a few more times, and create some half-chances, but our real shot at glory was gone.

So: disappointing in the end, but a rousing and heartening second half; and yet another team that we can surely beat next time around. But we won’t expect another 8-goal thriller in which neither keeper has a real save to make!

Dave was Man of the Match for his tireless running, but more particularly the triple near-goal heading heroics. Mark S was second (unlike James, last week’s double striker who was rewarded with nothing!), and Matt, the other scorer, third.

Thanks to Stuart for reffing, and Scott for assisting (and getting ready to answer the frantic call to make an appearance as a sub, which never happened: possibly none of us had the strength to get to the touchline to get him on!). Also to Brian & Eric for officiating later, to Tim for bringing all the beer; and to Peter for masterminding the substitutions.

MARK BRYANT