Old Esthameians vs Norsemen FC
West Ham
Saturday 12th February 2011
Norsemen Suffer Esthameia Attack
Dear Diary,
Another Saturday and another day of football and beers. Woke up early with a pain in my foot. Heroically played football for my work yesterday and got kicked on top of the foot. Could barely put my foot on the ground and as a result had to send the dreaded text to the gaffer to say I was out. Unfortunately Tommy Morgan also had to drop out on the day. Throughout the day I heard various reasons for the drop out. Not sure what one to believe.
Breakfast was a simple egg on toast. Nothing fancy but it filled the hole none the less. Said goodbye to the Mrs and head round to see Thomas. On route I get a call from Thomas and Neil. They are both sitting in the Albion enjoying breakfast. I get there and Tom heads to the lav. He was in there for a good 10 minutes so you make your own mind up what he was doing. Having said that I have lived with Thomas for over a year now and he is normally a quick pooer. Just something you come to observe after living with somebody for that amount of time. Dobbo on the other hand would take 25 minutes to perform his task. He would often try and attempt to open the toilet door and hold a conversation. The only problem being his attention span being 5-10 seconds. He would ask the same question 15 times and I would stop listening to him. Back to the Albion and Neil is insisting he isn’t paying for Thomas’ breakfast. He eventually forks out for both breakfasts. I buy myself a large cookie for being on best behaviour and we all walk back to the flat. Neil goes home and Thomas and myself set out on a task to find a mop. You wouldn’t think this would be hard right. Wrong.
First port of call is the Old Street Argos. No joy. We then drive to Sainsbury’s in Angel. No joy. Head into Angel on foot and visit 4 or 5 shops. None having mops. Our last hope was a discount shop. One of those shops that has one of almost everything. Everything is covered in dust and some things are ridiculously overpriced. Other things being a “bargain” as most posters dotted around the shop like to call it. They have mops. Spiceworld. However these mops aren’t to Thomas’ liking and he ponders on purchasing it whilst rubbing the moppy bit. I lose interest quickly and look for joke presents for Muzza as it is his 31st today. Minding my own business and looking at the kids toys a lady walks up to me and asks me “where are the bin bags?” I look at her with the most obvious ‘F@ck knows’ look I can pull and tell her “don’t work here.” She looks at me oddly and just walks off. I am hoping she is one of the mentals as the store was clearly owned and run by an Indian family. Now I have been mistaken for a lot of races in my time on this planet; Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, Kiwi, Italian, Mongolian, Cambodian, Argentinean, Serbian, Turkish to name just a few, but Indian is not one of them. I walk back to Thomas and he tells me “it's ok my builder is going to pick one up.” Brilliant! We get back into the car and go home.
Thomas picks up his footballing gear and we jump back into the car and zoom off to West Ham. Get to West Ham station and Thomas jumps out the car to pick up some pain killers. For some reason he locks the car whilst I am still sitting in there. Now I understand being in West Ham you take a little more care with your possessions, but the top was down on the car. Around this time Ossie drives past and parks up as he is lost. Turns out the pitch was 100 meters further down the road. Ossie attempts to park up in front of Toms car. He makes a right pigs ear of the reversing. After driving into the curb 3 times, Ossie opts to get out the car and walk over to Toms car. I attempt to get out but the doors are locked. Ossie reaches over and shakes my hand. At this point the car alarm goes off. Instead of Ossie going to tell Tom to turn it off, he stands by the car for a couple of seconds and then walks slowly back to his car. Cheers mate! It’s ok though because Karma got him back at the beginning of the game. Ossie completed 0 out of his first 10 passes........
Thomas comes back empty handed and turns the alarm off. We drive 100 meters down the road and get out of our respective cars. We then head over to the rugby club house and meet up with the Chef, Taddy Waddy and Muzza. We then head back to the changing rooms. Now these changing rooms had the same builder as the bank of England vaults and Fort Knocks. Had to get through about 3 looked doors before we got into the changing rooms. The changing room itself was interesting. It wasn’t quite a sauna but it wasn’t far off. It was a very tall room, with armour plated windows at the top. These gave the illusion that you wasn’t standing in a prison! Somebody had tried to break these windows to get in though. The problem being that it would be impossible to get down from or back up to. Robbers are idiots!
Ok so this is how we lined up today:
GK Bradley
RB Ossie
LB Macca
CB Reed
CB Tajae
LM Muzza
CM Leon
CM Taddy Waddy
RM Thomas
CF Mordi
CF Leroy
SUBS
Arda
Everyone was excited about Ballers absence. So much so, 4 of the old boys made the voyage from Edmonton to watch us play. Spirits were high now that the chink in the armour was away.
It is 2:30.00 and the game is about to commence. 2:30.16 and the game is stopped. Why you ask? Well Norsemen kicked off. The ball was fed out to Thomas who played a lovely long ball upfront to Leroy. Leroy latched on to the ball on the far right of the oppos box and deliciously stroked the ball into the far corner. Norsemen one up. That time is from the official Phillip watch. I watched him skip back up the line singing “16 seconds, 16 seconds, we scored in 16 seconds.” It wasn’t as gay as it sounds though.........
Straight after this Esthameians upped their game. To be honest their game could have been that high already, it’s just they hadn’t touched the ball yet. Norsemen always struggle against Esthameians. They have a style of play that we find hard to deal with. I wouldn’t say it was kick long and run but it is very similar to that of the old Arsenal long ball tactics. Ball over the top and let the pacey forwards run onto it. To be fair to them they are good at it and it clearly works for them. They work hard and keep it extremely simple. The pitch didn’t help Norsemen’s style and we found it very difficult to get the ball down and play football.
Around about the 15 minute mark Esthameians found a way back into the game. I am going to quickly take you back to 10 minutes before kickoff. The ref come over to the Norsemen group and went through the rules of the game and how he likes the game played. Now these are the very words that came out of the referees mouth “I will give the attacker the advantage where I can so don’t stop.” So basically what he is saying is that he won’t be playing off sides....... Seems weird but hey what do I know about refereeing. Oh yes that’s right I am a qualified referee.
Anyway back to the game and the Esthameians striker is put through. He is a good 2 or 3 yards off side. Our back two naturally stop as it is clearly off side. The Esthameians chap has a free run on goal and manages to slide it past Bradley who got a hand on it. 1-1.
The rest of the half was one way after the goal and Norsemen had a string of corners and crosses that should have been put to bed. Leroy got on the end of a sublime Mordi cross only for the goalkeeper to make a superb save. Leon headed just over from a corner. As a half I think Norsemen deserved to go into the break a couple of goals to the good, but this wasn’t to be the case. At half time Reed was replaced by Arda. Macca moved across to centre back and Muzza moved back to his comfort zone at left back. Arda now took up his place on the left wing.
The second half begun and Esthameians had a slight breeze behind them this half. This allowed them to exploit their style of play. 15 minutes into the half and the ball fell to one of the Esthameians midfielders feet. He composed himself and took a great shot. Bradley had little chance to save it. Luckily the ball struck the bar and went straight up into the air. The ball seemed to stay in the air for about 10 seconds. Basically it defied the laws of basic physics by staying in the air for so long. Bradley was sluggish getting up from the save. Luckily Muzza was there to head the ball off the line. Unfortunately the ball fell to an Esthameians player, who in turn had a great effort blocked by the returning Bradley. It was a great save. All of this was in vein as the ball fell again to another Esthameians player and he in turn blasted the ball into the net. To be honest we went to sleep and didn’t react quick enough to the danger. Esthameians showed great determination and energy throughout the game.
This was a wakeup call for Norsemen. The formation was changed to 3-5-3 and we went for it. This left us bare at the back and Esthameians missed a couple of glorious chances to finish the game off. One miss was probably the miss of the season in the SAL. The right winger did so well to cut in twice and evade challenges, only to trip over the ball when one on one with the keeper.
Minutes after this came the play of the game. One of Esthameians long balls was sliced high out of the pitch. Barry Ayres, who had just admitted to rupturing his knee ligaments on Thursday, saw the opportunity to put a bit of flair back into the game. With such grace and composure, Barry allowed to the ball to drop across his body and Berbatovesq controlled the ball with such ease. Bosh, just like that the ball was ready to be picked up and thrown back in. Unfortuantely Muzza's pace let him down and it took a further 10 seconds for Muzza to get to Barry and pick up the ball.
We went close a couple of times. Arda missed a good chance, but to be fair to the Esthameians keeper, he made a fantastic save. Leroy scuffed an effort wide and Macca had a header that went agonisingly wide.
At the end of the day both teams had their chances and both could have won the game. I would say Norsemen played the better football, but then I would as I play for them. Esthameians seemed like they wanted it more though and you could see how much the victory meant to them at full time as they celebrated. That doesn’t happen much in the SAL. They deserved it. They took the unbeaten record away from Norsemen. Hopefully this gives us a big kick up the arse and makes us realise we have to fight for this league if we want it. We had a lot of players out this week for various reasons, however the team that was put out for the game was more than capable of securing victory.
After the game I guess everyone had a shower but I didn’t stay in the changing room for long as it was a tad too hot for my liking. Didn’t hear of any willy dance stories so I guess they didn’t take place. Shame really.
Had some Chilly and chips in the club house and watched a lady boy set up the room for a party with his/her friends. I’m not actually being out of order and saying an ugly girl looked like a man. It was an actual lady boy. I am going to name the lady boy Dennis for the purpose of this story. James wanted to quickly flirt with the Dennis so he pretended he needed to do a wee as we left. Funny how is wee only lasted 10 seconds. He then came through the setting up area and Dennis asked James if he wanted to party. James giggled and Muzza had to pull him away. James looked sad.
Being Muzzas 31st, James, Taddy Waddy and myself decided to jump in Taddy Waddys van and head back to the Norsemen clubhouse for a drink. I had to sit in the back of Taddy Waddys work van for the journey. Not only did the back of the van look like a jumble sale full of crap, it was pitch black. I had to sit in these conditions for about half an hour. Not ideal. What did cheer me up was finding some really sh1t shoes of Taddy Waddy in the back of the van. He got a little bit of stick from us 3 for them!
Got back to the clubhouse and went blind in one eye from rubbing up against some asbestos in the pitch blackness of the van. We get a jug in and watch the spurs game with the 3’s and 4’s. Little Tommy Collier joins us and we talk about where the 2’s went wrong today. We then invite ourselves along for Muzzas birthday drinks in Winchmore Hill or somewhere like that. I have no idea about that area. Don’t know why they don’t just all go out around Shoreditch so that I can go home safely. Selfish......
We all get drunk and I go home about 10ish. Little Tommy gives me a lift to Edmonton. He is a nice guy like that. Should have pushed my luck and asked for a lift back to Shoreditch. I didn’t and because of that had to sit on the bus for 50 minutes. Got home, had a chat with the Mrs and then went to bed.
Muzza informs me he went on to a curry house after the pub. James fell asleep whilst dreaming about Dennis. Everyone got up and left him. I wish I was there to savour the moment. I wasn’t and because of this I am sad.
Good night world.
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