Gordon 0, Lane
Cove West 3.
Actually, it was Gordon 0, Matt 3.
I have failed to remember a famous 3-0 game with a
hatrick. Google tells me many times that Issam Jomaa scored 3 as
No such doubts today: three emphatic strikes, and it
could easily have been more.
A beautiful fresh autumn day for the start of a fresh
season. Salaia was looking a picture, and Ernie arrived, not (as had been anticipated)
from his hospital bed with a drip, but fighting fit and ready for battle, the
hospital visit having been postponed for a fortnight.
So all but one of the portents were positive. (My niece,
visiting from
But we started a little rockily. We couldn’t string
passes together, and for the first few minutes found ourselves under siege. But
Tony, in goal, always looked in command, and gradually the rest of settled down
to play the flowing football for which we are justly famous.
And before too long, our efforts were produced a particularly
settling moment. Ernie did well to find John, who threaded a beautiful through-ball
to the gap, just outside the area, where Matt & I were headed. Matt got
there first, controlled it and struck it sweetly. It was going very hard, but perhaps
a bit close to the ‘keeper? Many epter attempts to stop the ball would not have
succeeded either, but this one – look, no hands! – was doomed to fail. 1-0, and
first blood of the season to us.
We should really have had more in the first half. We
created many chances, notably James blasting just wide from a defensive lapse,
and a well-flighted free-kick evading everyone, including the last person in
the queue for it: me.
But it was by no means all one-way. Tony was called
on for one great save of a shot that was winging its way just beneath the bar;
and often to pluck the ball almost from the feet of advancing forwards
At half-time we resolved that attacking and shooting
were the go, and we certainly implemented the tactics.
The second half was all us. Well, except to the
extent that it also turned out to be a literary fest: four of us (and one of
them) managed to get ourselves booked, and each booking produced a long delay. First,
the players’ number had to be located on his shirt, then on the card; then lengthy
writing ensued: a sonnet, perhaps, composed about each offence?
But before all this happened, Matt did it again. We’d
had a series of passing moves that had almost paid off, and it seemed only time
before one of them did. On this occasion, it was my turn to push the ball onto
Matt as he ran through; another firm shot and 2-0.
Our opponents rallied at this point, but then the
flow of game gave way to the flow of ink.
Firstly, I was booked for dissenting from being penalized
when I was actually the victim.
Then an opponent (Svetozar Zeckvic, I see from the
matchcard: possibly of Welsh extraction) was booked for hacking at James
(although the ref had rightly played advantage, when the hack didn’t actually
stop him).
But James himself was next into the ref’s tome. It
looked like he, too, was more fouled than vice versa, but protests were in vain
(as Howard was later to find).
Then Peter was added to the list of miscreants for the
heinous crime of straying onto the field as a substitute before all of his departing
colleague was over all of the sideline (an offence very difficult to avoid if
you’re actually keen on playing football, which you could easily not be, if you
came across refs like this very often).
When I was a boy my grandmother had, on her wall,
embroidered in her own schoolgirl hand:
When the one
Great Scorer comes to write against your name,
He'll ask not whether you won or lost,
But how you played the game
I wonder now whether my grandmother & I were
wrongly steered by this, all those years. Should it actually be:
When the one
Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He'll ask not whether you won or lost,
But whether you came onto the field as a sub before the other player was
quite off?
Or perhaps today’s referee isn’t quite in touch with the
principles of the one Great Scorer?
And finally, captain Howard, protesting from the
sideline about some dubious decision was also booked.
“Enough”, we said to ourselves, and buckled down to
football again.
And soon we produced the perfect reply to all the
nonsense: another snappy goal from Matt, this one resulting from more
persistence from James in harrying a defender, and another clean shot: 3-0.
Still there was time for more chances and more drama.
Gordon did not give up, but they found our back line,
in particular, hard to penetrate; and the resolve of the whole squad not to let
them get even a consolation was impressive.
Eric, Tim, Ernie & Brian all looked on course to
score unlikely goals (which, in some cases, would have been the first of the millennium,
if not longer…!) but, unjustly, they came to nothing. As did a shot from Matt,
from a delicate Dave flick, which, in turn, followed a series of passes
reminiscent of that
Too soon, it was all over and we returned to the
folding chairs and (over a beer) marvelled, again, how well the new socks work.
Matt was, of course man of the match (announced in Ernie’s
inimitable way, which someone is going to have to try to imitate for the next
little while).
Tied for second and third were Ernie & Brian who,
I’m sure, won’t mind me revealing are our only players born in the 1940s. So
especially well-done to them & happy birthday & good luck to Ernie.
Thanks to Steve B, Tim, Scott & Howard for being
linesmen, and to Tim for bringing the beer.
And so we’ve gone undefeated between the two months beginning
with A. If we can do that again, it will be a really good season!
MARK BRYANT