Saturday 31 January 2009

Matchday VIII Postmortem

It was cold when I took off my track suit to play. Everything seems fine warming up. I trot round the running track with a hat on gloves, two sweatshirts and a track suit top.

I get about 200 metres and I feel this is a good idea getting out of a morning to run around. And it doesn't feel awful. The muscles have been stretched at yoga the night before and I am ready.

The trance is interrupted somewhat by the football match itself.

It started with me tucking in at right half and I watched the opening skirmishes unfold. Eventually I got involved.

It seemed to me that by the time we went 1-0 up we should have been well ahead. So when they levelled I thought more work to do. I'm not quite sure how our second goal was scored.

But after the break it was level pegging and I guess they just got tired because some very shoddy play led to it being 3-1 and within a matter of seconds it was 4-1.

Quite bizarre really. Then with that kind of cushion it was time for my team to turn off.

I stayed back, started screaming about concentrating. But I felt I was going a bit hoarse and since I was reading the news that afternoon, I kept quiet and concentrated.

It ended 4-1 and I have to say it was a fair result given the amount of chances we fluffed.

I was surprised at how their captain walked off when it was 3-1. Raging at the injustice of it all.

Before that dramatic strop, particularly odd was him ranting at the referee when he awarded us a free kick for a handball. The skipper was convinced I was offside but since the linesman hadn't flagged and I was well behind one of their defenders when I started to run on to the ball (which was stopped by a flailing arm), you thought what are you on mate.

I said to one of his team mates who was looking exasperated at his own captain that we've never scored from a free kick.

Sure enough we didn't score.

But we keep trying.