2008-9 Season

Punchy Brentham fail to land a knockout blow

This was scarcely a knockout performance from the ‘Chels although in Wayne’s case, it was certainly a bit of a belter. More of the pugilism later.

The game was remarkable for the return to the lineup of Stevie L.B, fresh from his exertions on the golfcourse and sporting a fine colour-coordinated lemon yellow outfit (almost the perfect match for my boots!).Yellow is obviously ‘in’ this season.

My comments about some of our midfielders needing new boots after last week’s hit and miss display against Old Salesians seem to have struck a chord with Tom B, who turned up in a shiny new pair (although he bottled out of yellow ones).

Anyway, back to the game. To say it was a tight encounter is an understatement. It remained goal-less for the best part of an hour with few clear scoring chances for either team. Frustration began to show early on and foolishly – after a little mutual niggling in our area – their big centre-forward (or should I say, ’striker’?) decided to throw his best upper-cut at Wayne.

Those of you who’ve been reading about Wayne’s recent encounters will know that his head is made of remarkable combination of sawdust and titanium. Also, at the same time as Slugger O’Toole threw the punch, Wayne decided to nut the attacker’s knuckles with his chin, all strictly Marquis of Queensbury, of course.

Handbags ensued briefly – few of us had actually seen the blow land but the culprit wisely took himself off (he had too, titanium breaks knuckles) although he somehow managed to get back on the pitch for the last ten minutes.

With the drama out of the way, it was back to the game. While Brentham had started well, we grew in confidence. But there was nothing to write home about at either end really and, as the second round – sorry, half – got under way, it was all to play for.

About 15 minutes in, a Brenthamite in an offside position scuffed a shot inside our area which hit John Murphy’s back on the way and went in. The goal stood and we were one-nil down, totally against the run of play.

We continued to press forward and won a few corners – and created some glorious chances. The best was possibly from Jake blasting a shot in after EP cut the ball across to him and forcing a decent save from their keeper.

At the back we managed to keep Brentham at bay but it was a bit of a miracle considering how bad our positional play was. Tommy T, nominated to play ‘in the hole’ was playing anywhere his little heart desired and El Tel was playing so far up the pitch he should have been on oxygen. Stevie B was not amused.

EP, who’d pulled himself off early on after a knock, took decisive action and brought himself back on along with Newbod (I think). It was a masterful move, worthy of a great and insightful footballing brain and resulted almost immediately in our equaliser.

A Stevie B corner came over their goal, was nodded back across the face by Jake and, in the resulting kerfuffle, Alex got a foot to it and put it away.Try as we might for the last ten minutes, we couldn’t find the winner so that’s how it ended, on balance a fair result.

Slugger was contrite after the game and will be back in action after surgery to his hand! Wayne’s head is fine (well, that’s a relative term, obviously).

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