Round 13 - 3 July 2010
St Michaels 1 – Chatswood Rangers 0
Kingsford Smith

Goal scorers:
Goal scorer : Nick

This is our best result of the season so far, backed up by a great all-round team performance that brings us level on points in the table with the opposition.

Everybody played well, and we also used the rotation very well. The most notable difference from the corresponding first round game was that we did not run out of steam in the second half, which must be at least partially due to increased fitness, not just the proportions of our home pitch.
 

Remember, we got tonked 4-1 by this team in the first round, but this time it was different.

In fact, despite being under constant pressure in terms of possession, in the second half, we did not really give them that much of a sniff at goal, and when they did manage to get through us, Richard Hawtin was there to make some outstanding stops.

Our goal came relatively early in the game, which makes it even sweeter that we managed to keep a clean sheet against these guys. We took the lead following an initial display of eccentricity by their goalkeeper, “El Loco”,^# who made an apparently random decision to abandon his penalty box. Good pressure on the ball by our forwards resulted in a shot/deflection from Nick bulging their net.

This is when we really started to believe we could win this game.

We fought hard to hold the lead, and indeed, at some later stage, for some sort of indiscretion, we were awarded a penalty by Chris. Up stepped our confident top-scoring hero Mido to put us 2-0 up and further enhance the likelihood of “hobnail boot winner” points for many of the St Michael’s 2R World Cup tipping fraternity. Ball on spot, Mido waited quietly and patiently for about five minutes for El Loco to clean his boots, repeatedly kicking the right upright. When the whistle finally blew, Mido blasted a spectacular, unsaveable drive just out of reach of El Loco. Unfortunately, Mido seemed not to have noticed that El Loco had taken up a position less than two yards inside the right upright, and the spectacular, unsaveable drive went a further yard or so wide, to the right of the goal.
 

Onlooking team-mates were somewhat perplexed by this;

perhaps a gentle side-foot into the left corner of the goal may have been more effective? Perhaps El Loco had psyched out Mido with his boot-cleaning antics and lopsided goal defence? Anyway, 1-0 it remained.

On went the game, with us holding firm, them applying pressure and at times, kicking and elbowing us. Returning to the fold after a long period of surfing-related rehabilitation to fix the injury he received in the first round game against the same team (a very nasty, pre-meditated foul off the ball if I remember correctly), Blake Cottle seemed again to be targeted by them for “special treatment”, including a particularly unnecessarily hard tackle from behind by their at “number 2”.

Anyway, eventually, the final whistle went, and we had WON!!

Beers in hand, there was much esprit de corps generated by the performance and result, until Tipmeister Scott quietly informed some of us that Mido had tipped a 1-0 victory for this game in the World Cup tipping comp. Hmm, we thought, did the lack of disclosure of this obvious conflict of interest prior to stepping up to take the penalty, coupled with the resulting miss cause us to doubt our top-scorer’s integrity? However, we managed by suspend judgement long enough to find the real reason for the inexplicable miss: being on 17 goals for the season, equalling the club record, Mido has followed the noble lead of Mark Taylor some years ago, when he declared on 334 in order not to surpass Don Bradman’s existing Test Match score record. Indeed, in order to remove all further temptation, Mido informed us that he had succumbed to the press gangs and would be joining the Navy, attending some sort of Boot Camp on the South Coast for the rest of the season…er, apart from next week, anyway! Particular thanks to Richard for playing on goal and for Chris for stepping up at short notice to ref the game.


^# EDITORS NOTE: "El Loco" is considered a compliment by many quality Goalkeepers.