Knobs 0 Old Owens 1

Apologies that it has taken a while for the match report to be produced.  It has been too painful trying to recall the events of Sunday.

They say sport is a cruel mistress.  I’m not sure who “they” are but “they” are right.  Sunday was like having Kathy Bates in the film Misery as your mistress.

Anyway, more of that later.  The mood was cheery in the changing room..  Jonno was trying out his best South African accent on us in the changing rooms, we think.  There was lots of jealousy that Darren was leaving early to watch the Lion King matinee in the west end and Tony C actually paused for breath between sentences for the first time this season.  Amongst all this our new signing Banksy sat looking bemused.

Greg turned up late and claimed the prize of sweeping the changing rooms along with his brother who was the 2nd to last to arrive. It’s great that we could bring the family together for some quality time.

We knew this would be a tough match.  Owens has always given us a good game but we have tended to rise to the occasion.  This match was no different.  In the first half, Owens had more of the ball than us but we were organised and active.  They were struggling to get in behind us and when we had the ball we made some fast counter attacks and looked dangerous.  Tony C did not have any tough saves to make.

Half time came and Jonno departed.  We do not know where he was going as he said something in a Jamaican accent, we think. 

Banksy replaced Jonno for his debut (39th different player used this season!).  Greg took a breather to plan his end of game sweeping session and on came non-goal machine Brendan (Wren).  The 2nd half picked up where the first half left off.  In fact we had the best chance of the game as goal machine Brendan (Walkden) got played in for a 1 on 1 with their very big keeper.  Alas, the keeper won this duel and the game remained scoreless.

With 20 minutes to go Darren subbed himself off for Greg and took a nice warm shower to ponder a drive to the west end and the cruel fate of Mufasa.

With Darren returning to the side-line with 5 minutes to go he was pleased to find we were still battling away at 0-0 and Owens were still desperately shooting from long range.  The goal machine’s take on this missing 15 minutes was “We defended really well but couldn't keep the ball.”  Succinct.
With time running out came the moment that ruined our weekend.  A ball was over-hit towards the right corner of our goal line.  The right winger of Owens almost kept the ball in as he wrapped his foot around the ball and cut it back to their big defender waiting on the edge of the box.  The defender smashed the ball in to our goal, top corner.  Lovely powerful strike but in vain as the ball was out before it was crossed.  Or so we thought….

We all looked at “our” linesman waiting for the inevitable flag to point for a goal kick.  Alas, the one person who didn’t think the ball was out was Dave K.  The air turned blue as the back 4, the goalie and side-line supporters all gave their best John McEnroe impression “The ball was out”.  Dave didn’t care and that was that. 1-0. All that hard work for nothing.  Dave K was Kathy Bates.  If he wasn’t built like a brick poo house he may have got more abuse but self-preservation kicked in.

Hakuna Matata