Another valuable 3 points yesterday despite the best endeavours of the two umpires to contrive a different result.
The first 20 mins were largely uneventful but Carnage were definitely looking the stronger side and Shaheen's only remaining game plan was to play a long ball game to get it up to their Ginga Ninja to try to create havoc in our D.
Carnage were obviously waiting for Poppet to turn up on his crutches as the action started as soon as he arrived! (Cheers boys!)
A break out through Steven, Pepe and Josh got the ball to Gunshow on the edge of the D who pushed it hard towards the goal through a sea of players. According to the umpire it didn't touch anyone on the way through and signalled for a 16. It was taken quickly but was swiftly regained by our midfield who forced a long corner. Josh took it quickly and dribbled into the D to force a short corner. A great push in from Arse gave Steven and Posh plenty of time and the ball was slipped left for Q to sweep in his second goal of the season. 1-0 Valley which took us into half time. Mark's team talk focussed on 2 aspects; taxation without representation and how to defend against long ball tactics. Both were proven to be critical in the second half.
As the heat built the umpiring got gradually worse and Mark' muttering about umpire taxation got gradually louder and louder. All 50-50 decisions went their way along with a few which any reasonably sober umpire with the correct prescription glasses would have comfortably signalled Valley's way. We did win a few more short corners but their defence were on good form and were able to keep out some good strikes. At the other end, our makeshift defence were doing a great job keeping the Shaheen strikers under control. Rob VDB and the versatile Dirty showed their usual resilience under pressure. Thomas, our new recruit from Damage had a particularly good game and it looks as if we will be able to rely on German engineering with a Teutonic partnership at the back sponsored by Vodafone!
The middle of the field was ours to command and our teenage midfiled of Steven, Adam and Pepe?!?!? had plenty of time and space to feed our wingers who were up to their usual tricks with marauding runs into the D. One such run was stopped by an illegal back stick which was not spotted by the umpires but in the interest of unbiased reporting it has to be noted that 2 minutes later Pumpy 'may' have inadvertantly used the wrong bit of his stick in a desparate clearance off the goal line! The umpiring was becoming more blatant and a sequence of short corners were awarded to Shaheen, some legitimate but others leaving the crowd bemused. Eventually the pressure told and a quick release to one of their strikers (as foretold by Guru Mark) saw her in the D and take a snap shot. Pumpy got his pads to it but unfortunatly a little late. The ball trickled into the net as the striker squealed, curtseyed to her audience and skipped back to the half way line while adjusting her hair. (Note. that the author was on painkillers at the time of the match so there may be some exaggeration in this report)
Once Shaheen had equalised one of the umpires signalled 2 minutes to go so there was a flurry of pressure on our D. 5 minutes later they still hadn't scored so the umpires gave them another 2 minute warning. Fortunately this cunning plan backfired as with less than a minute to play Steven and Adam combined to get Josh into the D and unmarked. Cool hand Luke took his time, steadied and fired his shot under the advancing keeper to claim the glory and the points for Carnage.
In truth we should have finished them off long before and Carnage will need to get more ruthless if we are going to succeed in this division but we will take the points and enjoy our rest.
Next match is in 2 weeks on the cabbage patch at Recreio so enjoy your break, get to training and bask in the glory of another win for Carnage with the odds stacked against us.
Go Carnage!!!