MATCH REPORT: UWMCCFC 8 – 0 ABACUS
No, you’re not reading that wrong. The oppo may not have even known the rules, but UWMCCFC managed to stick 8 past the array of opposition goalkeepers. Just for reference, that’s 8 more than last week when Ben Ralli was captain.
The scene was set on a cold afternoon at Tarkett, and the day began with Joshua Bennett taking his pre-match piss in the corner, documented by Ben on the club instagram until Josh told him off. To my knowledge, we’ve never conceded when Josh has done this, so I knew it’d be a good day.
The game started off a little scrappy, but it was clear from the off that we were the better side and it didn’t take us long to prove this. The engine himself, Cooper Smith, picked up the ball on the left hand side and drove past the defence to the touchline, before cutting it back into the path of Tom Dallmeyer who had little to do as he tapped it into the back of the net. The next piece of action, surprisingly, took place down our end, with Harry Rogers attempting to hoof it, but instead sent the ball spiralling towards our goal into the path of their striker. Luckily for us, he wasn’t very good, and Ollie Hotchin managed to deal with the danger.
Back down the other end now, and some scrappy defending, and poor attacking saw the ball bobbling around the box. It eventually fell to James Patient, and with the goalkeeper essentially standing on the post, he basically had an open goal. He missed. When I asked him to talk me through it, all he could say was “I panicked”. Clearly a man with 0 composure, he obviously wouldn’t be who you’d want stepping up to take a penalty. Not long after this miss, Cooper rifled a shot from the edge of the box but a good save from ABACUS kept the score the same. The only issue with this is that it wasn’t their goalkeeper that made the save, and we now had a penalty for handball. Our specialist penalty taker, myself, was off the pitch at this point, and I left it up to the players to decide who would take it. Much to my surprise, I saw James putting the ball down on the spot. Having seen his previous attempt at scoring, I wasn’t hopeful. He then proceeded to take what Tom Dallmeyer describes as “the worst penalty (he’s) ever seen”. It somehow went in, and we found ourselves 2-0 up.
James was clearly inspired by this, as he received the ball on the left hand side and drove diagonally towards the goal before slotting it into the bottom corner with the outside of his boot. Not sure how it happened but James somehow now had a brace. 5 minutes before this i was about to sub him off, but I felt too bad now, so I called Henry Wilson off and made my way on to the pitch.
Not much more happened for the rest of the half, and we headed into the break 3-0 up, knowing that our sub bench had more than enough firepower to ensure we built on our lead. We came racing out of the traps in the second half, with a strike partnership of first-half referee Josh Bennett and debutant Archie Bates attempting to cause some problems to the oppo’s back line. Early on in the half I found myself on the ball, knowing that for once I may have a chance to run with it without losing it, I drove into the box before cutting it back straight into the path of Josh Bennett, who slotted it past the keeper – yes you did read that right – Josh scored. (That’s how bad the oppo were)
.We weren’t done there though, after some nice work from Cooper to win the ball back in the middle, he sprayed a lovely ball over the top past the defence into the path of Josh, who took it surprisingly well and placed it into the bottom corner of the net. Maybe he’s not as bad as these match reports show. With the score at 5-0, I figured it was probably time to give the opposition a chance, and subbed Danesh Masani on. Within minutes of him coming onto the pitch, a long ball was played by the ABACUS defence, and Danesh was chasing it. All of a sudden, as if he had ignored Tanmay‘s advice and was carrying his cricket bag on a snowy day, he tripped. This wasn’t just a standard little fall, instead Danesh decided that he wanted to audition for CMD, and flapped his arms around trying to stay up for about 20 yards before tumbling over and going head over heels. This allowed the ABACUS winger through on goal, but fortunately Harry Rogers was somehow still concentrating on the game and made an excellent save to keep the clean sheet intact.
We hadn’t scored in a while at this point, and that was because unfortunately, as bad as the oppo were, they weren’t bad enough for Archie to score. Everytime we got near the goal, we turned back, slowed the game down, and got the ball to Archie. This continued for the whole game, but I feel that if I cover every chance Archie had, I may actually hit the facebook word limit that I’ve somehow managed to avoid. After all this, despite our best efforts (and Archies) he couldn’t convert. Ben Ralli had clearly had enough of Archie’s lack of ability, and attempted to drive at the goal himself. Unfortunately for Ben, he was brutally hacked down by the opposition’s left back. This did mean however, that Ben had a free kick. I’d seen him score from one of these earlier in the season, and I’d also seen the ABACUS goalkeeper so far, so I figured he had a chance of scoring. Ben attempted to almost loop the ball over the keeper, however it hit the bar, almost recreating the Ronaldinho v Seaman incident and the ball dropped straight to Bennett who attempted to square it to Batesy (again) but to no avail.
I now figured it was finally time to properly let the opposition into the game, and took off our most dangerous player (me). I swapped with Henry Wilson and took over as referee, ready to make some dodgy decisions. Within seconds of being back on the pitch, Henry appeared at the back post and managed to get on the end of a pass that was probably meant for Archie. Henry had little work to do to stick it past the keeper, and got a goal that could have easily been mine. The game then descended into carnage; ABACUS forgot how to take goal kicks and were rolling/throwing them out, Ben Ralli and Tom Dallmeyer capitalized on this and got a goal each to show for it, with Ben’s probably being the worst goal ever scored on the hallowed turf of Tarkett. Harry Rogers ended up outfield, with James Patient donning the gloves(ignoring the fact he couldn’t be bothered to put them on), and Archie missed another 200 chances.
All in all, it was a great day at the office for UWMCCFC, building on our already impressive goal difference, and gaining another clean sheet. Unbeaten in 5, 4 clean sheets in a row, top of the league. What a team.
See you after Christmas,Tom x
(Never getting over CMD, never scoring a goal, never had a full pint)