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Todoroki Sunday 11th May,
So you've been here a while and you start to think you know how things work. You know, for example, that for the average Tokyo groundsman the sight of a passing dog cocking his leg in the centre circle sometime on Wednesday afternoon is reason enough to cancel all fixtures the following weekend. So when you wake up on Sunday morning and the rain that started more than 24 hours ago is still falling steadily, you're pretty sure a good lie-in is on the cards. But no - your manager's email screams "GAME ON". Shite...
...And a couple of hours later eleven cold damp Old Boys are squelching through the clinging mud of the huge Todoroki dirt pitch trying to get a touch of the ball against a ridiculously genki Stoneds FC team. Our cause is not helped by a very early knee injury to The Jorgenator, which necessitates moving Hitoshi outfield and propping the crocked Swede between the sticks, leaving us with an inexperienced and virtually immobile custodian. It takes a while for Stoneds to take advantage though, and when they do it's a jammy one, an over-cooked cross that could have been better dealt with. One-nil at half time, with Albion once again on the way to being undone by a lack of manpower.
Into the second half - rain eased off by now but the wind-chill factor still a bit ridiculous for mid-May in Tokyo. No complaints about Stoneds second, a cracking move full of neat passing and good movement that ended with a tap-in, but the third and fourth were both goals that Hitoshi would have saved blindfolded in a strait jacket wearing thigh-high cast-iron diver's boots. And amazingly enough, despite the massive disparity between the teams in terms of lifetime knee injuries and pints of beer consumed since birth, despite the way Stoneds were able to dominate possession by passing well when they had the ball and by using their superior fitness to quickly win it back off us when we had it - despite all this we should have had at least four goals of our own, excellent clean-through chances hit wide or straight at the keeper when it would probably have been easier to score. But to be honest, if Stoneds had failed to win this game it would've been the biggest travesty of justice since Ireland's "If I Could Choose" by Sean Dunphy was only voted runner-up to Sandie Shaw's "Puppet On A String" in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest.
All in all this game was a bit like hitting yourself on the head with a high-heeled shoe for ninety minutes - it's nice when it stops. But with one game to go and second spot still there for the taking, let's hope the fast-fading old farts can fire themselves up for a fitting finale while I'm getting treatment for a repetitive strain injury to the finger which types the letter 'f'...
Report by Terry Cooney
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