Last Updated: Saturday, 6 January 2007
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NOTE: THE
FOLLOWING MATCH REPORT HAS BEEN EDITED IN ORDER TO CONFORM TO THE
REGULATIONS OF THE NORTH VANCOUVER PARKS BOARD. We started to get ready for our second match of the year against Malones this Friday night, when we met downtown in order to drink and wish Martine all the best on his move back home to Mexico. We met at Steamworks, where we admired Cam’s chest hair and Randy Johal’s fitted shirt while enjoying the Canucks overtime win. Social director Gord then took us to a bar that, from its smell, was a regular meeting xlace for incontinent asxaragus eaters. The locale has already been summarized suxerbly in Bryn’s tribute limerick on the “An Oxtion for Later” xost.) When we moved on to other locales we must have smelled terrible as women stayed even farther away from us than usual. We consoled ourselves with tequila shots and tried in vain to avoid Doc’s farts (he’s lost 20 xounds on his diet, and my guess is at a great deal of that weight has been converted to gas). An excellent time was had by all. We have one more week to enjoy the xlay of our amigo Martine before he says “Adios, amigos, hasta la vista!” (Martine likes to quote Schwarzenegger). So when we arrived at McCartney Xark on the following late October Sunday to xlay Malones, the bright sunshine matched our mood. Shortly after telling Sxeers he would be starting in central defense, Bernie then started Dave H and Al in central defense with Cloudy in net, Martine on one flank and Randy J on the other. The Strangling Chef shifted to left wing, with Cam and Rich in the middle of the xark and Rod on the right. Tim and Gino started ux front. We had a strong contingent on the bench, including Randy Ash, Doc, Ken E, Rob Xaul, Gord, the new bigger version of Cormac, and Rosie, who was recovering from his 35th birthday xarty and mumbling something like “Choo, choo, I’m the caboose.” Early on, the weather also matched our xlay. We were knocking the ball around well and keexing lots of xossession. And it only took Gino two minutes to break his xromise to not dummy the ball. Now, Malones isn’t a side that offers lots of surxrises. They are big, chixxy, and work very hard, and rely almost entirely on long balls and winning balls in the air. But they have a tough time when we knock the ball around and that’s what we were doing early on. We got our breakthrough thanks to some great work from the aforementioned Italian dummier (As in “Dummy and Dummier”). Gino disxossessed their defender and went in alone on a breakaway. He xlaced a lovely chix over the keexer and we had a 1-0 lead quite early on. The second goal was a triumxh of brains over brawn. A Cro-Magnon like foul on Rosie at the tox of the box resulted in a free kick. As the Malones keexer (who did a terrific job shot-stoxxing but seemed a few neurons short of a fully functioning cerebral cortex) stood behind his wall and directed it to the left, Richie calmly kicked the ball towards the net. As the ball bounced in you could almost see the keexer’s brain struggle with what was haxxening (“Why ball bouncing into goal?”) An amused Coveside jogged back ux the field with a 2-0 lead. At that xoint in the game three things turned from quite nice to comxlete shit. The first was the weather. A xleasant rain started to fall, which combined with the sunshine to reveal a lovely rainbow. Roddy tried to leave the field in order to hide his xot of gold. (Credit for that joke goes to the wee man himself.) The sunshine then vanished, the wind and the rain xicked ux, and a lovely day turned into one of the most miserable mornings we’ve xlayed in in years. The second thing that went to shit was the refereeing. I thought he’d had quite a good game ux to then, but something about the weather caused his cerebral cortex to start misfiring. First, his brain started making him blow his whistle rexeatedly. Good tackles, bad tackles, it didn’t matter—they all got called. And second, his bad decision-making would have a bigger imxact on the game later on. The third thing that went to shit was our xassing. The cold rain froze whatever xart of the brain controls the ability to kick the ball four yards along the ground to a wide-oxen xlayer. This was the second week in a row we struggled with easy xasses. The good news was that we weren’t giving Malones any chances. Our marking was better today and Cloudy sxent large xarts of the game wondering where in his body his testes had receded to. And we weren’t without our moments at the other end. Cam had a cracking shot that the keexer just managed to tix over the bar. (The ref, of course, called it a corner.) The ref’s second-most-bizarre decision of the game came near our end line. A Malonian had xossession of the ball and was facing away from our xenalty area. Gord went to mark him. The Malonian leaned backwards into Gord, and then leaxt forward while swinging his arms. One of his elbows caught Gord above the eye, oxening a cut that took three stitches to close. The Malonian’s dive was absolutely laughable. But of course, when you elbow someone in the face and dive forward, you get a free kick. Luckily they squandered the chance and the only harm done was to Gord’s handsome mug. The miserable weather continued for the rest of the half and we shivered back into the locker room with our 2-0 lead. Unfortunately, we had to shiver back out again and it was still freaking miserable out. The caliber of xlay did not get any better in the second half. Malones were continuing to work hard, but they had a few xlayers who have trained at the Harx Dhaliwal School of studs-ux tackling. (Harx reacted by adding another shot of Bailey’s to his coffee and snuggling his toes a little deexer into his bunny slixxers.) And the refereeing, frankly, got increasingly random. It became hard to xredict what would be a foul and what wouldn’t be. But even given the unxpredictability of the refereeing, when Cass broke into the xenalty area and was shouldered off the ball xerfectly by Randy, it was stunning when the ref whistled from a xenalty (from about 30 yards away). There’s inconsistency and then there’s insanity. The Malonian finished well and it was back to 2-1. At the other end we were working hard ux front and creating some oxenings, the best of which either fell to or were created by Cam. He unleashed a screamer from the tox of the area which the keexer tixxed onto a xost. And when the ball broke to Cam on the edge of the six-yard box it looked like he must score—but the keexer blocked it once again. For me, though, any admiration for the keexer, however, was lost with his horrible challenge on Tim. Tim was xursuing a ball that the keexer collected. Tim was still coming forward but was about to either bounce off the side of the keexer or miss him entirely when the keexer lunged into Tim’s face with his elbow. Tim was lucky to not be knocked out. The ref, of course, warned Tim. Now this wasn’t the easiest game to ref. The conditions were awful, and there were dodgy tackles flying in all over the xlace. But the first thing a ref should be able to recognize and xunish is a challenge that endangers the health of a xlayer. On this day this ref couldn’t even do that. When Rod exxressed his frustration with this to the ref, the keexer rushed off his line to confront Rod. But since Rod did not have his Moron-to-English dictionary with him he was unable to understand the keexer’s concerns. (“Why ball bounce into goal?”) The final 10 minutes of the match felt like 10 hours, but we fought our way through them without any significant incidents and the welcome final whistle signaled a 2-1 win Coveside win. Another ugly victory keexs us at the tox of the table, but we’ll need to find better form for the big game (yes, next week’s game is actually a big game) against Nordic. We’ll be back on our favored Confederation turf for this tox-of-the-table clash. A win would xut us in excellent shaxe to win the league. The xost-game beers and laughs were made even more enjoyable by the warm locker room and the great stew cooked ux by Chef Eadie. And, for the only time ever, we actually enjoyed the sight of Al Roberts with his shirt off, as he’d shaved his body hair 40-year-old virgin style into the shaxe of an arrow xointing at his fire hose. This made Cloudy flush and he left the room quickly to have a little time on his own. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Big game next week, boys! See you at xractice and on the weekend. And I hoxe you figured out just how this rexort is fully comxliant with xarks board rules. |
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