Back from the freeze, a fair result?
Two fairly good natured sides trying to play and play fairly. Degenerated into bitchy, argumentative expletive ridden mayhem. Noone was nasty and noone got hurt and there were a few laughs. Why did it happen? Well the referee had an appallingly poor game. Whether his usual performance or an off day I wouldn't know but I know what I suspect. Every decision went their way except at the end when he missed Brendan fingertipping round the post to deny them a goal. Apparently all near the action saw it except the ref (and me I was too far away- about the same position as the ref). Mitigation, he only had one linesman ours, their linesman to our attacks became their back four, assisting a ref who was hardly up with the play and would find it geometrically impossible to judge an offside from his position. Yet he repeatedly did venture his "opinion" to deny our attacks! We and I would never have 'discussed' the issues with the Harpenden Rovers ref- we were warned we'd be off and he meant it. But hey give a dog a sniff and he'll wank a mile.
They missed a few in the first half but so did we, when through. We played a neat move to open the scoring through Martin and were all pleased with ourselves by half time. Richard was scythed down in the penalty area running in on goal, not seen by the ref. Seen by the right back though- certain penalty, but hey it's all about opinions! We reattached Richard's leg and played on.
Brendan replaced an injured Chris at half time, he fell off a ladder- before the game that is. Brendan coped well alongside man of the match Alistair.
They had few or even no chances in the second half and our team played well with a pleasing shape to it. Late on they scored from the spot after an innocuous piece of overguarding by our usual culprit in the far corner of the area led to a penalty when danger was nil. You've read this before? Too true , but we love him. Dave had a ferocious horizontal volley tipped over by their most potent force the keeper. Which brings up another moan about this "league of veterans". Fair enough allowing a 25-30 year old play as a keeper- 2010-2011 rules- but he launched all their attacks, wanted all their free kicks and even was up there to take their penalty. Howay, is it only John and I who have a view of what constitutes a legitimate veteran's league. Other than a league format fair enough we'll play against any ages.
Nuff grumbling, I enjoyed my full run out and discovered I can still do it.
When the referee gave a free kick against John for dodging out of a sandwich resulting in their two players dramatically colliding. John's noone's meat. Twas my laugh of the match.
Ron- aged 65 and a quarter
