Matchday X Postmortem

I have to say heavens be praised for banks opening on Saturday mornings.

The team from BNP turned up without their assassin striker. Unlike a few years ago, his branch now opens on Saturday mornings and so he plays for the Sunday morning team.

This leaves the Saturday morning team short. And though their tricky playmaker did cause a bit of anxiety when he got the ball, there was no one to capitalise on the openings up front.

Unlike our side which seemed to have all the momentum. While I shuffle around the pitch I have these moments where I reflect on the phases of the match.

We might be dominating but we’re not scoring, I muse. How important is it to solidify that control into goals?

Leading 1-0 and being in command always makes me feel perturbed.

The counter attack and slight error and suddenly it is 1-1.

It didn’t happen that way. We went in 3-0 up at half time.

I don’t know if my recent goal shyness is behind me because I scored a goal that I don’t usually score.

Hit from the edge of the area rather than running onto a pass and slotting it past the keeper.

Since those kind of goals haven’t been coming of late, maybe I’m moving into the edge of the box goal phase of my game.

Anyway I’m still bemused as to how it happened and I’m trying to replay the sequence in my mind. I am still quite blank.

The (for me) wonder strike meant that the defender stayed with me. So I started to run all kinds of pretty patterns to create space for the others.

Thanks to my wonderful regime of yoga, swimming and cycling, I feel as if I have the puff to do this.

The other joy is that I don’t actually have to touch the ball, have physical contact with other people and potentially crock myself in a tackle.

The bloke tracking me was losing more and more steam as the first half wore on. Towards the end one of his co defenders said: “just let him run”.

Wise counsel since all my leggy zig-zagging had failed to yield anything concrete since my wonder strike.

The defender should have stayed with me really because I was able to get away from him on two occasions and was part of the move that led to the second and third goals.

Sadly the fat lady doesn’t sing after 45 minutes. And the opposition had a wind assisted rally in the second half.

But it fizzled out and 4-1 was a fair reflection. One of their other star strikers will be back for the rematch in a few weeks.

But by that time one of star defenders should be back from holiday.