2007-8 Season

Teddington Vets 3 Kenchels 2

Mud, mud, glorious mud. There’s nothing quite like it for stirring the blood, as Stevie B or Wayne will both tell you. They were like a couple of hippopotami on heat in this sodden encounter with the Teds, slopping about in the ooze and slime with gay, very gay abandon.

As for blood, we had plenty of that in the second half from the boy Newbods who had his nose readjusted early in the second half. Gory details follow later.

And so to kickoff. It had rained almost nonstop for more than 12 hours as we splish-sploshed out onto the Teatro di Tiffiniani. The pitch had held up – but only because the ground was near frozen. It was to cut up (sorry, Chris) as the game went on…

We stormed into a lead about five minutes in when a high-paced Stevie B corner pinged onto Alex’’s head at the near post and zinged into the net. The Teds were stunned. They were so stunned that 30 seconds later, Craig was picking the ball out of the back of our net after they’d carved down the middle and put an equaliser away. Familiar story?

And so it was back to square one. Well, we huffed and we puffed but we couldn’t get  things to work out. And then, I did my bit, by standing off their shortest player (4ft 3ins max) and allowing him to nod a sitter in at the near post. Craig got to it and almost put it around but it hit the post and went in nevertheless. Ouch.

So that was it at half-time. Two-one to the Teds and we are treated to an insightful and brilliant pep-talk by the boy Gav, in his vague juvenile way attempting to stand in for the absent EP. After we woke up, we ran out to meet our fate.

By now the pitch was so badly cut up that parts of it looked like a bad day at Paschendale. If we’d strung up barbed wire across the halfway line it would have only added to the authenticity.

The order of things becomes a little muddied here – geddit – but I think it was us who scored next, Tom B I believe finishing off a goalmouth scramble. We had been piling the pressure on but failing to capitalise on the chances.

We were definitely on top and might have scored another one or even two had we been a bit more prompt in the goalmouth. My lasting impression is of one brilliant ‘Chels move – a series of delicate one-twos – that ended when the ball hit a small pond on the penalty spot and came to an absolute standstill.

Teds on the other hand were struggling to make an impact at our end and both Stevie and Wayne were so busy slaloming around the mud that the Teds had no chance of getting through. Stevie in particular had so plastered himself in mud that he looked like the chocolate man in the Lynx advert.

The Teds however did make an impact on Newbods. He dived in with his bonce to reach a low lying ball and ended up with a Ted knee in his nose. The impact was heard all over West London and generated a score of 4.5 on the Richter scale.

The result was one bust nose and a stream of blood and Newbs had to come off. I saw him later in the day and it had swollen so much that his specs were sitting at a 45-degree angle.

Apart from all that it looked great for the ‘Chels  – until one of the Ted wingers roared down our left and slotted a deft shot from a tight angle to win the game. And so, dear reader, that is how it ended. Three-Two to the Teds. Who nose what next Sunday may bring…

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