Unfortunately, football tends to be like this. One week the Vets team has a very satisfactory afternoon’s work and wins 3-0 (i.e. last week) and the following week all the luck is against us and we lose 3-0 because of three scrappy goals and no luck in front of the opposition’s goal.

On a bad, bumpy, pitch which was still frozen on one side, we started well enough and should really have scored a couple of goals. Chris Moggridge’s brother Steve helped us out and did well up front. He hit the post once and the opposition’s goalkeeper saved well in a ‘one-on-one’ with Steve. The Wanderers are a good and competitive side and soon created chances of their own. Our defence, with Wayne in goal, dealt with these well though until a miss-hit, “have it!” type of ‘up-and-under’ some 25 yards out caught Wayne off his line and flapping away like a seagull in distress. Technically, it should go down as an own goal, as he managed to get his wing, sorry hand, to it and slap the ball into his own net.

One off bad luck you might reasonably say. Not quite so, as the second half saw the Wanderers double their lead with a similarly miss-hit, up-and-under effort that again saw Wayne do distressed seagull impressions. This time he blocked the dubious effort but decided to give the in-coming forward an early Christmas present wrapped as an easy tap in. To be fair to Wayne, in between these two unfortunate incidents, he made a stupendous reflex save from a hard hit volley some 10 yards out to keep us in the game.

It was just one of those frustrating afternoons, where nothing quite worked or went our way. The 3-0 score line (which certainly flattered the opposition) was reached when stand-in goalkeeper Kevin, who had pulled a muscle shortly before, picked up a back pass on the goal line simply because he was unable to kick it, because of his injury. Any intelligent defender would of course have worked this out of course before attempting a back pass…. The resulting indirect free kick was hammered in the roof of our net off Chris’ head despite his brave blocking attempt.

It just summed up our unsatisfactory afternoon’s work. This was further typified by the five foot nothing referee demonstrably marching the Dutchman (much to the joy of Wayne in particular!) to the sideline for a ticking off as I had dared, as always very politely of course, to question one of his decisions. Other previous, and following, foul-mouthed four letter word strewn attacks on him by the home team were however ignored. Odd, very odd, and I’m not sure how to take this. Should I use the same approach to avoid further referee lessons? I’ll check with Alan Lawrance next time. Answers on a postcard to a confused Dutchman in a clearly complex English culture.

 Tony van Emst