[quote=“Juhniallio”]Lads, what the fuck happened? Were they really good? Sounds like a nightmare. Presumably Rock upset the balance somewhat.
To know that my old astro team was hammered the night the Beijing Spitfires won our Astro league(Div 1) on goal difference takes a bit of the shine of my spanking new league winners medal…[/quote]
Firstly, congratulations on your own C-League victory.
As for ourselves, well the game started with the traditional kick-off and they came straight down the pitch and I knocked a shot out for a corner. A guy made an untracked sprint from back post to front and clipped the resultant dead ball into the far corner on the bounce for a nice goal. 1-0 down straight away - good start.
Yet again we could only muster 4 of the 11 paid members of the squad which is getting to be a right pain to be honest. Fair enough, some of them are genuinely injured, like Colly with a broken collarbone, but it’s hard to play with any degree of fluency or organisation if you’re trying to round up lads that you’ve never played with before a couple of hours prior to kick-off every week.
Anyway, we worked away for the rest of the first half and had one or two chances but in fairness they had most of the ball and I’d a good few saves to make. Then shortly before half time we conceded possession in our own half and they basically had a 3 on 1 and ended up drawing tackles and walking the ball into the net. The goal was met by a ridiculously over the top high pitched and prolonged scream of delight by one of their players as if they’d just replicated Carlos Alberto’s goal for Brazil in 1970. Clown.
The second half began much as the first did with another kick-off and we were under pressure again from the start. We’ve played far better teams than them, it was just that we were completely disorganised and they knew what they were doing. So when we weren’t tracking runs they were creating 2 on 1 chances all the time but for the first 15 minutes of the second half we kept them at bay through last ditch blocks and tackles and a fair few saves.
Then we conceded another crap goal when turning over the ball in our own half and the guest players, bar Cully, more or less lost interest then. In fact for that goal a guy came through with his mate alongside him with only me to beat and I actually got a hand to the ball as he squared it across and pushed it out a few yards but yer man was able to turn around, go back, retrieve the ball and then knock it in as I was scrambling across the goal with most of our lads still watching from the half-way line.
It got embarrassing then and we conceded another 4 goals in the last 5 minutes, 1 of which I should have done better with, but the others were similarly rubbish goals to give away as the other ones I’ve described. Either losing the ball in our own half or not bothering to mark anyone or track anyone or letting them pile forward en masse. At least in the first half we were forcing them to have shots and I was able to save most of them but as the game progressed it got to the stage where they were able to walk the ball into the goal.
The main thing to come out of the game was that it’s going to be fairly pointless playing if the regulars can’t be arsed turning up as when trialists and emergency loan signings play they generally stroll around and take it easy. And if one person’s not really bothered it’s tough in 6-a-side, whereas if 2 don’t try then you’re going to take a hiding and that’s what happened.
It was as low a TFK dressing room as I’ve ever been in and that’s not just because Farmer’s away with work this week - the tall freak.