Romhill 0-7 Spartans

A crisp morning fell upon the sleepy spartan boys, as i awoke and trudged out from my abode the match already appered a daunting prospect........ not only did we know that we were going to be playing in the cursed orange strip (that had previously brought 3 losses on the spin for the club) but frost adorned the wind-screens and I could quite clearly make out my breath in-front of my face noticeably to a greater extent than the halitosis generally creates!

It looked bloody cold!

After some clever mental jiggery by the Gaffer, cleverly sending us to the wrong car park at such an early hour and forcing a barage of u-turns/tight parking decisions we finally arrived some what sparadically at a huge building that we foolishly took to be a changing facility. Dean consulted Romhills bean-pole forward who quite elequently said 'no changing room ear mate, theirs some bogs if u wanna go in dare'. Being a classy outfit we opted for the upmarket choice of the edge of the car-park fishing our kits out of a skip........nice.

After a very slow and lathargic warm up, to be honest it looked like it could have been heading for a big slip up........ Changes of position rang out through the squad due to the absence of Sam, Bracken, and I nearly forgot .....Ringer. We lined up,

GK Moon
RB Stanger
CB Tommy Gun
CB Asbo
LB Mr Phil
RW Al
CM Ellis
CM Talon
LW Morrisey
FW Longcroft
FW Lane

Bench:-

Lavery
Bruno
Lazzard
Gaffer?

As we prepared for kick-off the pitch had just started to soften up the sun streaming in from the side, every-one not trying to get too carried away knowing we were about to play the leagues wipping boys missing some strong players. We had come a croper a few times in previous seasons in similar circumstance, how would we fare today............

we kicked off

Early chances fell to Longcroft and Talon who shot wide.

Their keeper got in a paddy about something or other and walked off the pitch, he looked a bit like a butch lesbian, however he obviously knew that they were a bunch of not so agreeable gentlemen and I can't really blame him/her. All credit to one of their players stepping up between the sticks. No simpathy from us...... we alredy had an outfield player in goal, but we had the mental advantage of knowing their man wasn't a proper keeper they didn't have a clue yeti was standing in and i bet if you ask them now thay still wouldn't.

Unfortunately this some-what worked against our game, paying dividens in the end with a hat full of goals, but at the expense of becoming a shoot from any-where team with absoloutely millions of shots comeing in and missing spectacularly from all over the shop!

Tactical change with Morrisey going up front and Matty Lane back on the left wing, the gaffer looked to have identified a wekness down their right. very much like for like but as lane's boots were falling apart it looked a good idea to keep him by the touch-line for running repairs.

Longey broke the dead-lock, a neat passing move saw him run into a tight angle down the left hand side, but a ferocious shot fired through the keepers mittens and across the goal into the far corner. Rob's workrate and persistance after some early misses had payed off and we had our necks infont.......1-0

Talon made it two, ball lose in the box between morrisey and matt they managed to work some space, he spun and hit the ball on the volley quite comfortably into the back of the net from the penalty spot.......2-0

We kept creating chances, mainly down the wings with some nice interplay noticeably down the right with Stanger, Al and Ellis. and also down the left with Phil, Matty and Ellis. That Ellis kid was working his socks off across the centre of the midfield, with Talon behind him mopping up/ feeding the attacks and relentlessly banging the ball in the direction of goal at every oppertunity...... Whilst we as a team didn't look as good as we know we can, we continually pushed forward into shooting opertunities.

Romhill's tactic appeared to be feed the wing backs, who will lump it forward for a 50/50 challenge and on the occasions the ball fell to them again kick it over the deffence so that one of there six-foot+ guys can run after it. They seemed a bit tactically bereft with such a tall attack crosses would have suited them better than the continual hoof. But they got one to work with a ball from right to their left and they were through on gaol, only an off-side decision saved us, but it looked pretty clean cut to the majority of the players. One Romhill player took exception, why he had a better view than lazzard on the line I don't know but his potty mouth only displayed his upmost class and the gulf of ability/maturity between the two teams.

Subsequently a fantastic run down the right by speedy Al and a super low cross created a chance for Lane who took the volley clean past the keeper into the net. Diss-allowed for off side, I really have to dissagree because as I shot I was dead in line with the line-o, Al and the cross which was neither backwards or forwards but as parallel as possible. Anoying, to say the least, but not the reffs fault as he can only go by what is signalled whether it be correctly or over-wise.

So we kept on and Lane pushed in to the area on the left of the pitch aggrieved he attampted to cut inside two players and the ball got knocked clear on the wing to phil who put in a quick cross...... do we all remember barkingside last year? He only went and did it again, the cross arrowed into the top right corner, even cliping the stantion with a ping for good effect. He looked as surprised as any-one but he'd fired us ahead 3-0 with the half time whistle soon aproaching it was no more than we deserved.

A few dodgey reffin decisions with yeti being bungled over on the edge of his box and nothing being given and a few late tackles from their midfield tubbs without punishment and the man in black signalled half time.

You'd have been forgiven for thinking we were loseing 3-0 for the shouting and intense discussion that began our half time collective, but we all knew that we weren't living up to what we could do and our target of 10-0 looked a long way off! The gaffer summed it up, we were only in first gear but on the positive we were winning by a clear margin. Just keep working, the only time the opposition were creating anything was when we gave the ball to them. Their keeper was just fetching the ball kicking it out for another shot to reign in and fetching the ball again, more goals would deffinately come.

Second half kicks off..., in no particular order.......

from robs perspective.........More of the same really.
Scored goals? Check. (Ellis 2, and 1 each for Morrisey and Talon)
Clean sheet? Check.
More persistent fouling? Check.
Did I stack it in the mud again? Check.

Subs came on.....

Bruno for Al
Lazzard for Tom
Dean for Morrisey (oh my god??)

They were awarded a dubious pen at 6-0, it was a laugh as well... The best part was when the geezer responisble for a large percentage of their fouls skied his shot straight over the bar. He had been employing a 'winning tactic', which basically involved saying 'number 'x' is crap, he'll balls it up' to try and put us off whilst we were in possession.

So his Pen was a supreme bit of irony.

And he stopped his tactic after the miss.I didn't really mind the bloke or the number 9, they made me chuckle a few times by ripping into some of their less able teamamates. I was just pissed off that when they did foul, it wasn't called.

There was fisticuffs, and of those Fisticuffs, all I saw was Phil sort of DDTing the littlun that was getting fresh with Lois. That more or less finished the incident.

Asbo's jaded vision witnessed his sensational shot that bruised the woodwork and according to replays on hawk-eye actually went in?

However nullified by the following......

1) The gash kick ... what were you thinking man?
2) I think we had a whole leg air kick in there too, although you said Tom called it so you left it... you gay... What were you thinking man?
3) Moaning all the time for people to name all their headers, not doing it yourself and challenging Phil after he'd called one...
4) 'Prima donna play', including:
(i) Receiving the ball as last man, trying to take on their striker and go on a run but getting tackled straight away to be fortunately bailed out by your partner + the sheepish grin after.
(ii) Abusing your position of Captain to stay largely up front for the second half, so often that the team made a tactical switch to accomodate your extreme gayness.
(iii) having the gall to actually shoot from the distance you did.
(iv) Generally punting the ball into the channels like Michael Dawson.

Man of the match, Rob Longcroft. Not only did he pull out a full 90 minutes, but opened the scoring and played a major role in the majority of attacking/scoring moves. Fully deserved and appreciated by all.

In the end........No one is kidding themselves that we played any where near as well as we have in the past and we all know we can do, but we did what was needed and it looks pretty good on the corinthians website regardless how poor we really were.

The pot shots from all over the park were a bit silly, but we have been guilty of not getting enough shots away in the past so maybe this will help us not to be afraid to try our luck and come to a happy medium between the two?

It's fantastic having this drive to win back again. I'm so up for next sunday it can't get here too soon in my opinion. Even more so with Valentine not having a fixture until Jan (I know i've said it already but) we could be top of the table for the end of the year! I didn't want to get too carried away at the start of the season when we were riding high but this will be after 10 matches with an avarage of just over 2 points a match and scoring almost 4 goals per game, it all sounds very exciting.