“If I can't practice, I can't practice. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice.”

Either Allen Iverson or Gino talking about practice

You think that practice makes perfect? Then you haven’t seen the fall 2005 edition of Coveside FC. In spite of the fact that attendance at practice has been going down faster than Al Roberts at the annual fireman’s muff diving competition we continue to squeak out victory after victory. This week a late goal by our talismanic sponsor Mike Browne took us to a 1-0 victory over the sausage boys of Freybe.

After the yearly low of five players at this week’s practice, Bernie was understandably concerned about whether or not he would have enough players out for the game. But in spite of illness and injury laying low several players, including Tim, Randy Ash, and Graham (who was upset over the rejection of his audition tape for America’s Next Top Model) we had an excellent turnout. That being said, some of the guys looked like they’d had more beers than hours of sleep over the past few days. Dave Speers was still recovering from his Tuesday night birthday party when he tried to put a lampshade on his head without unplugging the lamp first. New father Randy Johal got lost on the way back from his diaper genie and showed up at the field with a puzzled look and a handful of Huggies wipes in his hand. And Mike Browne had been working so hard that he’d lost 10% of his body mass (luckily that was only 5 pounds).

Bernie looked to reward the players who made it to practice by putting them straight into the starting lineup. So the starting lineup was Rob P., Dave H, Martine, Ed, Ken, two girls from the U-18 team that shares the field with us, two guys from Ed’s brother’s team who practices next field over but are pussies because they won’t scrimmage with us, a bum that Bernie found shooting heroin in the back of his truck, and a dead seagull that he ran over in the parking lot.

The recent rains have made the fields at Inter River more slippery than Doc’s intestines after a habanero enchilada, and this did not make for the prettiest of games. Passes that were even slightly off target skidded right past teammates and everyone was struggling to keep their footing. Brad was not the only one to mistime his jump to try to control a skidding ball, but he was the only one of whom Rod noted “Hey, I saw something that looked like that when I looked in the window of Curves last week.”

Not many chances came either way in the first half. Freybe were getting some crosses in and had a couple of opportunities on headers (surprising given that their two forwards are both 5 foot 6 inches), but Vinnie was commanding his six-yard box in the same way that Cam commands the ladies he hires at barelylegalwebcams.com.

Rob Paul got into an exchange of handbags with a Freybe player and received a yellow card from the ref for insisting that he had discovered the proof to one of the last unproved mathematical laws: the Riemann Hypothesis (which conjectures that neither the Riemann zeta function nor any Dirichlet L-series has a zero with real part larger than ½). We hear Graham has just proved the Catch and Release Hypothesis, which conjectures that the likelihood of having a successful one night stand is equal to the number of charming remarks he makes minus the number of rye and gingers he drinks divided by the number of times he says “Wow, you’ve got a phenomenal pair of sweater bunnies.”

Although the conditions were making it hard for us to string passes together, we were catching Freybe on the break. Mike had the best chances of the first half on a couple of breakaways but couldn’t get his shots on target. Eamon had a free kick tipped just over the bar. The worst moment of the half came when Ken Eadie went in fiercely for a tackle and had to be carried off the field after injuring his knee. With that as a damper on the first half’s fun we went in for the half time talk at 0-0.

Bernie gave his usual amazing half time talk: amazing in the sense that trying to figure out what he was talking about was like trying to find your way out of a maze. We took the field for the second half knowing that one goal was likely to break the game open like Rod’s protective cup under the pressure of a normal man’s package.

As the half progressed we took more control of the midfield. The combination of our having more subs and being on average 8 years younger than Freybe began to shift the game our way. Freybe’s only chances were coming from well outside the box, and those balls that could have caused trouble were claimed by Vinnie, who was knocking Freybe players around like Harp knocks back rum and cokes at his bi-monthly porn and fried chicken parties.

As time ticked by you could sense the increasing levels of frustration in the Freybe side. But for the second game in a row the fabled Coveside spirit of cooperation kept us from bitching at each other as much as our opponents. The fact that lack of practice = lack of fitness = leads to lack of ability to speak due to having no oxygen in the lungs probably also had something to do with it.

With about ten minutes left, a hopeful clearance from your scribe was so skillfully directed that Mike Browne had very little to do in order to score. By “very little to do,” I mean he only had to beat one defender to the ball on the sideline, cut towards the net and avoid a second defender, and then slide the ball past the keeper. He did just that, and his terrific solo effort (making up for his less-than-impressive breakaways in the first half) gave us the crucial 1-0 goal with only a few minutes to go.

And in those few minutes we looked much more likely to score than Freybe. Mike broke down the right wing and laid on a perfect cross for Rob Paul six yards out. Unfortunately, Rob’s quick calculation of the angle of elevation needed to clip the ball over the sliding keeper failed to properly account for the effect of friction between his boot and the ball (if only he’d had his protractor with him.) Freybe’s only chance came when a stray ball looped into the area, but Vinnie once again knocked a Freybe midfielder flying and claimed the ball. Soon after that the final whistle signaled a 1-0 Coveside victory.

The beer and laughs after the game were a hell of lot warmer and dryer than the previous week. Gino came out to claim his beer for his closest guess on the number of breast references in the previous week’s breast match report ever (although there was some controversy over whether “lost sheep” is a legitimate synonym for breasts). And our best wishes go to Ken. Hopefully the injury isn’t too bad and he’ll be back with us playing drunk soon.

Although we’ve won three big games in a row, there are very few easy games this year and next week we’re back at it against a Malones team that’s going to be desperate for three points. Hopefully we’ll see more guys coming out to practice as schedules loosen up, injuries heal, illnesses pass, and guys begin to miss the weekly camaraderie of the post-practice beers (and the lovely jubblies that sometimes appear) at the Queen’s Cross. See you next Wednesday, 8:15 at Ambleside.