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OiFuto Sunday 20th April,
We should have known from the start. When you line up against an opponent wearing a green, yellow and red kit, and they're kicking off with a green yellow and red match ball, you can pretty much guarantee that it's going to run for them rather than you. Nevertheless, the Albion Old Boys overcame both the biased ball and their own rustiness to get past a much-improved Guarana side with a 4-2 win that (barring further forfeits) should guarantee at least second spot in Div 3.
The shameful second forfeit of the season in the Old Boys' last fixture against Shane had a doubly negative effect. The four points conceded effectively blew our previously decent chance of taking the division title, and the loss of another chance to play football further emasculated what has already turned out to be a very weedy playing schedule this season. No surprise then, that most of the Albion players spent the first ten minutes of the game squinting in bafflement as they tried to recall what they were supposed to be doing with this outrageously colourful round thing that was flying and bouncing around them. Gradually though, a sufficient number of Old Boys found a sufficient amount of footballing muscle memory for the Albion to take a grip on the game, and about fifteen minutes in Kuni Hosoi gave a lovely layoff from Karl Twohig the finish it deserved to open the scoring.
Playing on the vast expanse of Oifuto 1 against a much younger and impressively genki Japanese side, the Old Boys were very much in need of the cushion of a quick follow-up goal, and they came very close to getting it. Karl Twohig showed on three occasions in quick succession that he'd recovered his memory of how to break forward from midfield like Bryan Robson, only to show that he'd replaced his shooting boots with those split-toed wooden platform clogs you get in the toilets of Japanese inns; several other Albion sharpshooters seemed to be donning similar footwear. And late on in the half those missed chances came back to bite us on the collective buttock as a few moments of defensive dithering on the edge of our box allowed a very juicy Guarana shot to whistle past Tommy the Cat before he even had a chance to waggle his whiskers.
It got worse shortly into the second half, as a routine Tony Adams Two-Step was made to look foolish by the butcher's dustbin of tripe and bollocks that constitutes the current offside law. The offside Guarana forward who failed to control the ball as it bounced past him was deemed inactive because he didn't touch it, allowing his mate to run through and tuck it gleefully away. All I have to fall back on in reporting this pantomime are the words of Bill Shankly when Liverpool lost a soft goal to a 1960s incarnation of the "inactive player" rule: "If that fella wasn'ae interfering wi' play, what the f**k was he doin' on the pitch?".
The goal did serve to rouse the Old Boys from their senile slumber, beginning a bizarre period of play when it really did seem to be Us Against The Ball Which Refused To Go In. It banged itself off the woodwork a couple of times, helped the makeshift Guarana keeper into a couple of no-look saves with body parts he didn't even know he had, and generally refused to be netted in a way that Moby Dick would have been proud of. It fell to Super-Ringer Bevan Colless, fresh off the Hokkaido plane after three months hard toil on the slopes of Niseko, to finally show the ball who's boss, taking a touch and a clever change of direction before banging home the equalizer. Same player again put the Old Boys back in the lead with a powerful looping header from a great Naoki corner, and then the hat-trick with a nice cut-in from the right and a fierce low shot into the far corner. An impressive trial, but the lad may need a couple more years in the pickle jar before getting a permanent call-up. We'll be in touch, Bev.
Though Tommy the Cat did need to extend his claws to impressively paw away a late Guarana attack, Albion held on for the win without much further trouble. And after the game the Setagaya Crew of the Old Boys legged it so fast that those who remained thought the changing room must be on fire. So much for the Jolly Veteran's Social Club. I think we'll have to change the motto on our shirt badges from "Sumus, Ludimus, Bibimus" to "Sumus, Ludimus, Do One Sharpishimus"..
Report by Terry Cooney.
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