Thursday 6th August -- pre-season fixture.
NSL v CMLS - we thought this would be interesting, but although some football was played at Church Lane, it was the crunching tackles, one-one-one altercations and awful crass, foul language that stick in the memory.
Yes it finished 2-2 (keeping our average goal/game over the 3.5 mark), but the score hardly seemed to matter as the teams seemed to want to outdo each other in a "who can produce the worst foul" contest. No contest as it happens - Linby's no.4 with a tackle that had the Ollerton Manager flying off the bench producing a stream of verbal abuse that was aimed not only at the players but at the young Referee as well .. out of order, well out of order.
Ollerton were kept waiting in the rain as the home team finished their pre-match warm-up - lovely summer weather again - actually had my new umbrella out ( thanks Mrs. Kev). Although I'm not a fan of the brolly, there is very little cover at Linby so I swallowed my pride and joined Kev under the "gamp"!
One person without a brolly was good friend Rob Waite. He is the author/editor of the excellent the66pow blog......a great read by a genuinely nice and very, very funny man.........(flattery over, time to write a little about the game!).....
Ollerton scored within 90 seconds of the start, someone finishing well at the far stick, after a static home defence failed to clear a free-kick from the left.
The teams were level on 29 when a great ball down the line found the Linby no. 9, Ju Wright, who lifted the ball delightfully over Simon Haynes in the Ollerton net. Four minutes before the break, the home team took the lead - Wright springing the off-side trap before laying the ball out to Tom Campbell in the the 7 shirt, who had a simple tap in from close range. H-T 2-1
Now came the changes, now came the battle, now came the soldiers!!!!!! Both teams made several changes to their starting elevens, and the subs were certainly prepared to get stuck in. Late tackles by the dozen, players squaring up to each other, f-words, b-words, lots of other abuse and not a lot of respect shown to a young step 7 Referee who is just learning his job. These were grown men acting like thugs and bully boys. The most abused word of the evening was "friendly"...
This is from Wikipedia "Friendly means showing kindness to someone, as a friend would behave. Thus friendly implies a mode of friendship as distinct from amiable or genial. The opposite is unfriendly or even hostile" So maybe, on reflection this should have been billed as a pre-season unfriendly....
Still, it made a dull game more interesting, and the Referee had no choice in the end but to book a couple of players from both teams. Ollerton drew level in the 70th minute - the Linby stopper unlucky to have the ball beat him at his near post after he had made two super blocks.
No idea who was who really, but this was one of those games that had you wishing / pleading for the final whistle to blow. Finished 2-2 on goals, and I think it was 2-2 on bookings as well - if I am wrong, no doubt Mr. Waite will put me right!!
Saturday - Stags v Crawley
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.