2008-9 Season

BA takes no time to crush spaced-out ‘Chels

British Airways 11 Kenchels Fc 1 ⋅HT: 10-0 ⋅ Stevie B ⋅Venue: Concorde Club, Heston

By Dotden ⋅ October 6, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ 3 comments ⋅ Post a comment

Time, as they say, is entirely relative. To the beleaguered ‘Chels, today’s flogging at the hands of British Airways seemed to last an eternity but to BA it was no more than a short-haul flight. It was as if a hole in the space-time continuum had opened up.

We’d been asked to start promptly – so we all showed up at ten, well, all except Euan and myself. I showed up with ten minutes to spare. “What time do you call this?” demanded EP. “The nick of time, Boss?” Proof once again that time (and timing) is indeed a relative thing.

As for Euan, he appears to have disappeared into a black hole somewhere on the A4 and may at this very moment be being extruded like vermicelli as infinite gravitational pull sucks him into an infinite void (something he might enjoy). Or maybe he just had a sniffle when he woke up.

It was a wet, ‘orrible day, the pitch was perfect but that space-time thing had some horrible tricks in store for us.

Time Lord El Tel, out in the left-back position and in another dimension, was the first to suffer. He thought he had millennia to spare when he took an easy pass but lost it and BA scored. We were just 30 seconds into the game and it was possibly the fastest goal yet scored against the ‘Chels.

From this point on, it all went terribly wrong. Mistake after mistake, goal after goal. To give you an idea of how bad our passing was Jake, who lasted only 25 minutes ‘cos he was a bit poorly, played only five perfect passes – one to Tel (for their first goal, I think?) and the other four were kickoffs!

Five minutes in, Mo complained to the boss that the formation wasn’t working (we were playing the defensive one that has worked well against BA before). So we reverted to normal and things got even worse. Mo, (yes, remember him?) began to wish that Ramadam had lasted a week longer.

There was drama about 15 minutes in when Wayne put in an early candidate for injury of the season, taking a stud to the head and and opening up a longish gash.

Blood streaming down his face, he pops off for first-aid and comes back wearing the weirdest bandage headgear you have ever seen – a sort of cross between Widow Twankey, a Tibetan priest and a Kamikaze pilot – and goes straight back on again without blinking.

The remainder of the first half ran like clockwork. They scored a goal every four minutes or so and we struggled to get anywhere close to scoring. Our penalty area was reminiscent of Fort Apache: The Bronx. Every minute that went by was putting years on us – but BA seemed to be getting younger and faster. It seemed like the longest first-half we have ever played.

By half-time, we were ten-nil down (another HT record, Statto?). EP’s half-time pep-talk focused on the need to pull ourselves together and make something of the second half which, perhaps amazingly, we did.

Somehow we clawed ourselves back into the game – or maybe BA just got bored of all that scoring. Either way, the passing was dramatically improved with EP, Mo, Alex and John Murph stringing some nice one-twos together.

For the first 15 minutes or so, they seemed to be on the back foot and we had a few decent chances. EP put a couple of great balls in for Alex to run onto but we couldn’t get it quite on target or ended up hitting it straight at the keeper.

At the other end, Craig made a couple of decent saves – including one from a BA penalty, awarded after he took their forward out as he broke through on goal.

Consolation came from the foot of Stevie B who hit a low shot from outside the box that hit a defender on the way into the back of the net.

As the minutes ticked on, BA came back in it and we defended a string of corners from both flanks. But we couldn’t stop them nicking an eleventh goal – can’t remember whether that came before our goal or not?

So that’s how it ended. One for the record books certainly but proof if ever proof were needed that if Stephen Hawkins ever fancies a game, he’d find the ‘Chels a relatively interesting team to play for. You could bring him on at half-time for me, Boss!

Tell the world you love the 'Chels!

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Tags: incidents, injury, records, time