HSBC vs Norsemen FC
16th October 2010
HSBC pay out dividend
Dear Diary,
Here it is. The game that everyone wants to play. HSBC away. Woke up all excited having not played for two weeks. Was made a lovely breakfast and watched a bit of soccer am. What a morning! Walked home to find Thomas in his pants playing Pro Evo with our other housemate Dobbo. Dobbo isn’t very good at Pro Evo. He has one move where he runs down the line with the ball and then passes it across the box and hopes one of his little cyber men kicks it in the goal. We like to call this “scoring a Dobbo.” I had some more breakfast in the shape of tea and toast and then packed my bag. Thomas was running a little late so we hop in a taxi and motor on down to London Bridge. The taxi driver was a bit of a d1ck and kept trying to talk over myself and Thomas. He was like a needy little lap dog. “oo oo look at me I can do tricks and know really cool facts. The police in the city get paid more because they work in the city!” I was thinking to myself “F@ck off with your rubbish facts and keep your eyes on the road.” I obviously didn’t say that because my Mum has brought me up well. Saying that I have now used a naughty word in my Diary and she is more than likely to read this. I guess that means I am going to be grounded for 2 weeks.
Get to London Bridge and catch up with the gang. Everyone is buzzing. Leeroy turns up after a morning of Clay Pigeon shooting. He must have been in a rush as he forgot to give his shooting jacket back. Anyway we all make our way to the platform to get on the train. All of us apart from Leeroy who forgot to get a ticket. Leeroy runs for the train but misses it so myself and Tadd get off and wait with him. We then get told off on the Tannoy system for holding the train up. Cheers Leeroy. Managed to get a train 5 minutes later but had to sit next to the loo. The smell was quite high pitched to say the least. The only place I have been that smelt similar was at a public toilet in Delhi. Once again cheers Leeroy. Everyone arrived at HSBC apart from Tadd, Leeroy and myself. We got left with all the rubbish kit. Cheers Leeroy.
As we got off the train we entered what is possibly one of the best places you can play football without being a professional footballer. I would even be tempted to say many Professionals would get excited about playing on the HSBC first team pitch. We run to the changing room, listened to some drum and bass and quickly get changed. As we ran out we all giggled like excited schoolgirls would. We did our warm up with Phillip and James. Tajae nutmegged me and then I fell over. Probably not my best moment of the day. If anything it was quite embarrassing! The bibs lost the warm up game.
Thomas called us back into the changing room and gave us a talk and named the starting 11:
GK – JACKO
RB – BALLERS
LB – MUZZA
CB – TAJAE
CB – GAV REED
RM – THOMAS
LM – HEMPSEY
CM – TADD
CM – TT
CF – LEEROY
CF – JARRETT
SUBS
ARDA
MACCA
OSSIE
So that is how we lined up. Quite a strong starting 11 despite the fact Ballers was playing right back.....
Norsemen win the toss and kick off. Within the space of 25 seconds we have ourselves a penalty. HSBC are not amused. From kick off the ball is played to Tadd who plays it to Hempsey. Hempsey found Ross who in turn lays it off for Muzza. Muzza then uses his lethargic left foot to pop a ball over the top for Jarrett to chase. Jarrett shrugs off the centre back and rounds the keeper. The keeper coughed on Jarrett and he went down. Ref gives a penalty. Rightly so as well. You should put your hand over your mouth when you cough. Does the HSBC keeper know nothing about the spreading of germs and disease? How does he think the Plague started? Hempsey steps up and ups his penalty conversion rate to 50% for the season. HSBC 0 – 1 Norsemen.
The penalty clearly aggravated HSBC and as a result they step their game up for the next 10 minutes. Norsemen start giving away cheap fouls and HSBC go close with a couple of efforts. Shortly after the HSBC pressure lightens, a long ball is played football towards Jarrett. Jarrett chases the ball down and forces the keeper to come out and head the ball clear. Unfortunately the ball lands at the feet of Tadd. Tadd displays some lovely technique and volleys the ball into the empty net from about 30 yards out. Tadd being the excitable little chap that he is goes absolutely bonkers. Unfortunately for Tadd the closest person to him is Thomas. Tadd runs over to Thomas to celebrate, however Thomas just waves him away as Thomas is too caught up in moaning at me about poor positioning! Nobody else celebrates with Tadd. Tadd doesn’t care and starts doing cartwheels and forward roles in celebration. HSBC 0 – 2 Norsemen.
Norsemen then start to get into their rhythm and look solid all over the pitch. Some wonderful defending from Gav and Tajae allowed the midfield 4 plenty of time on the ball to spray the ball around. Some lovely one touch passing and moving from Norsemen opened up a few more chances in the first half; however the score remained HSBC 0 – 2 Norsemen.
One moment to quickly mention from the first half was the blossoming of a relationship between Ballers and the HSBC number 11 (I will give him the name Charles for the purpose of this report). I have seen Ballers in action before and he likes the hard ball policy when chatting up a bloke. I think Ballers saw Charles’ beauty early doors and was hatching a plan from the very first minute to get into Charles’ boxers. Their little flirt session went something like this:
Charles: “F@ck off mate”
Ballers: “Calm down mate I have only grabbed your shorts”
Charles “Look mate I don’t like stuff like that”
Ballers “Don’t knock it until your try it. I haven’t told many people this but I once attended a sex party wearing a suit. There was all sorts going on in there. I felt pretty stupid as everyone else was wearing gear for sex and I rocked up in my dad’s suit.” (Macca overheard this conversation and brought it up again on the train back to London Bridge. I will come back to the sex party story.)
Charles “Look mate just F@CK OFF”
Ballers “You cant get away from me whilst we are playing mate. I can touch whatever I want to touch”
Charles “Look just p1ss off and leave me alone”
Ballers “I like the way you are playing hard to get. Gets my juices flowing”
Charles “You lot are weird. I am not playing the second half”
On the balance of the first half performance I think Norsemen deserved to go into the break in the lead from their use of the ball when they had it in their possession. Thomas made way for Ossie at half time. Not a lot to be said at half time as we had a great first half and deserved our lead. We knew the next goal would be the decider. If HSBC got it, they would grow in confidence and be right back in the game. If Norsemen got it then we knew it would knock the wind out of HSBC’s sails and allow us to go on and get more goals.
And with that the whistle went and Charles only played 5 minutes of the second half. I think Ballers ended up getting his number though.
Norsemen started the second half even better than they had finished the first half. Some excellent pressing from the midfield 4 and some really good passing resulted in some good balls in from the wide players. A combination of poor finishing from Norsemen and good keeping from the HSBC keeper kept the score at 0- 2. One chance that spring to mind is a cross from Hempsey or Muzza that landed at Ossie’s feet. Despite the frantic calls of “TIME”, Ossie hit a first time shot which was so bad that it didn’t go off for a goal kick. It didn’t even go off for a throw on, instead it allowed HSBC to break on the counter attack. Ossie explained after the game that he saw the light and had to hit it. Well done Ossie. And he wonders why he started on the bench.....
Norsemen played some brilliant football in the second half. They are the words of the ‘Chef’, not mine. Leeroy and TT hit the bar with separate efforts and Ossie and Jarrett both had shots within the 6 yard blocked by the impressive HSBC goalkeeper. We found out after he game that the GK was in fact a defender standing in. Well done to him.
The score should have been 5 or 6 by this point but to give HSBC their due, they held in there and with 2 minutes to go got a free kick midway in the Norsemen half. I would just like to point out that it was Macca who gave this free kick away for a silly foul. Hempsey lost it with Macca and shouted at him. I would relay what he said but it is a tricky to pick out words from a northern accent. It was just a dreadful noise. The HSBC number 7 scored from the resulting free kick. Some question of a foul in the box but then again we were awarded a dubious penalty in the first half. Fairs fair. Jacko didn’t think so as this meant he had to pay his subs for not keeping a clean sheet. He threatened to do all sorts to the ref but as per usual with the youth of today, they were all empty threats.
Full time HSBC 1 – 2 Norsemen. On the balance of play we maybe deserved more goals but a win is a win. The HSBC lads are a good bunch and let’s hope they stay up. I actually hope they stay in the same league as us so that we can play on that pitch again.
We all have a stretch down and walk back to the changing room. A bunch of us then try and outdo each other with exotic w1lly dances in the shower. I think Ballers and Macca have been practicing at home. Fair play to them though as it is a fine skill to have and as my manager at work says ‘another string to their bow’.
We then drink some beer in the club house and have some pizza and chips. Not the greatest food but beggars cant be choosers. Travel beers are purchased and we get back on the train to head back into town. Couple of things to mention from the journey. Ballers going to the sex party in his suit. We had a good 20 minute conversation about that. think he got off rather lightly. I think he may have cut the bottom out of trousers though to make it a bit more kinky. Also Thomas called James chunky and James didn’t take too well to it. Something about “carrying” and “excess timber”. There was definitely a couple of tears so I felt it best to leave the conflict zone and go and sit with NRC.
The Nelsons retreat was the first port of call on the voyage to Shoreditch. Pool was played, beer was consumed and NRC’s Indie music from the 90’s was put on the juke box. We then journeyed to a tequila bar for a quick shot. The tequila bar was about the size of a small shoe box. Somehow we all managed to cram in there. The owner then claimed to have run out of tequila so we had to leave. That was after just 1 shot! He must have really hated us!! Then on to the bricklayer Arms. James and Thomas then decided to put their mean words aside and decided to have a push up off. Thomas won easily as James is actually carrying a bit of excess timber...... We all got really drunk and visited 2 or 3 more bars. Cant remember much after this as I was smashed. Think we ended up in the bedroom bar. I attempted to dance but could barely stand up. I was then saved by my lady friend who took me home to bed. As I was leaving I seem to remember Macca and James having a dance off. Somebody described James’ dancing similar to that of Mark Owen in his Take That heydays!
That’s it for another week.
Night World.
