Norsemen FC vs Alexandra Park
Saturday 19th March
Edmonton Green
3.00pm
Norsemen Go Two’s Up On Alexandra Park
Dear Diary,
So, again not a lot to report on this morning. Thomas was down in Devon, celebrating his Dad’s 60th so I was left on my jack this morning. Watched some Soccer AM and had a bagel and then pretty much got ready to leave for football. Walked to the bus stop and got on the bus that terminates at Edmonton Green. Played hat watch on my own. Won comfortably. Score was probably 35-0. It would have been more if my eyes and brain worked quicker, but sadly they don’t. Consequence of being from Essex and having small eyes I guess.
Stupidly didn’t do my research for today’s trip. Forgot Spurs were at home to West Ham. Traffic was shocking. Spent an hour and a half on the bus. Not ideal really. Had some really weird people sit next to me on the bus. Now it was a very nice day and for some reason a gentleman got on wearing a coat that resembled a sleeping bag. He must have been roasting. Got off the bus and started walking to the ground. Half way up Church Street I hear a ‘toot toot’. It was only little Tommy Collier. He let me in his new car. It has electric windows. He seemed disappointed that it was such a nice day and he had to sit on the bench. Surely a good day to sit on the bench. That is what I was thinking to myself anyway.
Met everyone in the bar and had a little chat with the Chef and Gav. Today we had the pleasure of two extra supports. Mrs Hempsey and Mrs Ballinger. They attracted a lot of interest from the old boys. Hempsey managed to get a shocking piece of news from his Mrs later in the day which I will come back to. So I walk to the changing room with Jarrett and Ballers. We all agree we have only had a couple of beers the night before. One of us was lying.
Put a bit of drum ‘n’ bass on in the changing room. Leroy doesn’t like it and puts on some weird pop song. Annoyingly it was on my iPod so it made me look like a dick!
Went out and warmed up with the chef and phil. It was properly hot so we all got a nice sweat on. The line up was as follows:
GK Bradley
LB Carriou
RB Ossie
CB Gav
CB Macca
LM Hempsey
RM Ballers
CM TT
CM Tadd
CF Leroy
CF Jarrett
SUBS
Tomaldinho
Leighton
Arda
A strong starting 10 again........
So it is 3.00pm and time to kick off. Alexandra Park won the toss and get proceedings underway. Within 5 minutes Norsemen were on top of the game but found it hard to get any real momentum. They looked nervous if I am going to be honest. Chances came and went for Norsemen. Leroy looked a bit more dangerous this week, after firing blanks last week. Despite it being a warm day, Leroy still chose to wear his leggings. Funny little lad our Leroy.
With about 30 minutes on the clock we got a break through. A ball was played up top and Jarrett got a good head on the ball. Leroy chased on to the ball and slotted past the Alexandra Park keeper. It was a toe punt down the middle of the goal really. The Alexandra Park defenders were very annoyed that Leroy wasn’t given as off side. He is so damn quick that I doubt they could tell if he was or not.
Norsemen 1 - o Alexandra Park
Shortly after the goal Macca pulled up with an injury and had to come off. Ballers, who was having a decent game at right mid, slipped back into centre back, Hempsey moved to right mid and Tomaldinho come on at left mid. This is where Ballers day went spiralling downhill. I’m not sure if Brad had anything to do in the first half. Maybe a couple of free kicks into the box, but I can’t think of any shots he had to deal with. I don’t think Brad likes holding the ball though as he tries to throw it as soon as he catches it. His kicking was excellent today though.
The first half finished 1-0 with Norsemen starting to look a bit more comfortable and relaxed. We all went into the changing room at half time and had some oranges. Phillip pointed out where we had been going wrong and asked us to correct this. We said we will try our best.
Second half begins and Norsemen start to make some early chances. Dan Carriou, who had been brought up from the reserves last week had been put on free kicks and corners as he was the only person in the squad that kicks it with his wrong foot. We won a free kick early on in the second half, just outside the Alexandra Park box. It was on the right hand side, so naturally favoured the Left footed player. Dan Carriou lined up to take the kick and to be fair to him the ref made him wait a long time to take the kick. Dan stepped up and scuffed it wide. The free kick was so bad that nobody said a word to him. Not even “unlucky mate” or “chin up son” or “better luck next time”. He knew he had done badly so just run back to his position.
Shortly after the ‘free kick incident’ Norsemen won a corner. Dan Carriou stepped up and put in a semi decent ball. The ball was cleared back out to Dan. The ball out was a high one and the sun was high in the sky on this particular day. Did this faze Daniel? No. Daniel calmly brought the ball down on his knee and put in a delicious ball that Leroy claims to have headed in at the far post. Again another one for the dubious goals panel. Looked to me like the defender put it in. I am sure the website will say Lunghu got both though so I will go with that too.
Norsemen 2 – 0 Alexandra Park
Almost from kick off Alexandra Park got the ball up the striker who was their best player on the day. Ballers pushed the striker out to the touch line. If you are reading this report Ballers I would stop now because it isn’t going to be pretty for you. The striker back heeled the ball around Ballers and turned with ease. Ballers slipped and fell on his front. In two words Ballers was ‘mugged off’. The striker made his way into the box, but his shot was blocked. Ballers was still on the floor at this point.
Shortly after this Tadd put Norsemen 3 up. The ball was played in from Ossie (probably wasn’t Ossie but the ball come from that side of the pitch) and Tadd rose above the keeper at the back post and nodded the ball in. The ref said Tadd had used the keeper for leverage. The ref was wrong though. Anyway we should have kept on pressing and scored more goals. With 10 minutes to go the ball was played to Dan Carriou. If you haven’t taken my words of advice already Ballers then I would seriously stop reading now. Dan passed the ball across the back line to Ballers. Ballers had a lot of time now to pass to Ossie or just kick the ball long. He could have even kicked the ball back to Brad or worst case scenario, kick the ball out for a throw. Did he do any of those things? He did not. What Ballers thought he would do was take on the striker. The striker tackled Ballers. As a result of this act of stupidity the striker was one on one with Bradley. To be fair to the Alexandra Park striker, he hit an extremely good shot and scored. Ballers looked annoyed that everyone was angry with him. Not sure why. After the game I managed to get a couple of quotes from the old boys.
Barry Ayres – “I saw the striker slip Ballers a fiver as he took the ball off him”.
Radio – “An utter disgrace”.
Chunky – “If it was up to me he would be in the 8’s. Sadly they won’t take him”.
Can I just illiterate that they are the words of the top end of the Norsemen Hierarchy and in no way quotes that I have just fabricated.
Norsemen 2 – 1 Alexandra Park
We managed to see out the game and get a result. Today was a result that we needed. By no means our best performance but a win none the less. We should have converted more chances today but we didn’t.
Alexandra Park were a better outfit than at the begining of the season. I think if they managed to stay up then they have some good players that could do well.
We all stretched and warmed down with the chef and then made our way to the showers. Just Hempsey and myself taking part in the willy dance show this week. I designed a super hero costume whilst drying myself.
Basically it was just my towel as a cape and that was it. Looked pretty cool. The chef liked it but Dan Carriou didn’t. I bet Dan would quickly change his mind if I turned up to rescue him from a gang of bullies.
We all go into the club house and watch England get humiliated by Ireland. Ballers hands me a bit of paper that he found in Hempseys bag. It was instructions on how Hempsey thought he could improve in training. Bless him.
Ballers Mrs slipped up and let Hempsey’s Mrs know that Ballers was out on the razz last night. Seems like Ballers telling Jarrett and myself that he had only had a couple of beers the night before was total b@llshit.
Get the train back with Dan after the rugby and then carry on heading south to Brixton. Get smashed and then head to a dub step night. A guy in the group of people I was with was probably the campest straight man I have ever encountered.
Best bit about the night was the strobe lighting. No matter what hand life has dealt you or how you are dancing, strobe lighting makes you look cool. I hold my hands up and admit to being a mediocre dancer at best but on the night of 18th and the early hours of the 19th March I looked pretty f@cking cool. Only in bursts of 10 seconds though, other than those 10 seconds I looked like a pleb.
Fell asleep on the night bus home. Luckily the last stop was my stop. Walked into the flat and saw the security man dancing to himself in the kitchen. Good job security man, doing your job well there. Took all my clothes off and went to bed.
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