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Misato Saturday 17th May,
Last week the red faces were from embarrassment at being on the pointy end of a 4-0 tonking; this week the red faces were from sunburn and bursting blood vessels as the Albion Old Boys huffed, puffed, and eventually flopped knackered over the season's finish line with a hard-earned 3-2 win over Tokyo Panthers.
As always these days the Old Boys lived up to their name with their 1950s disdain for squad football - Real Men Don't Use Subs, even on a day when the mid-morning mid-May heat was straight from a trailer for Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'. And as always these days the Misato pitch was providing the same kind of test of touch and concentration as playing keepy-up in a Bouncy Castle. To call the playing surface "mangy" would be an insult to diseased dogs everywhere, no matter how bad a mix of scattered brown tufts and cracked bare patches the poor mutts had. Yet despite these infrastructural impediments, both teams did their best to remain true to The Beautiful Game, and when the dust settled enough to make it visible, there was some good football to be seen. Albion dominated the early going without causing the opposing keeper to dirty his knees, but it was the Panthers who pounced first - goal-mouth scramble, goal-line clearance bounces off post, onto forward, into net.
So one-nil at half-time to the team with the sexier name, and the team with the sexier players (check out the photo-spread "Karl UnKovered" on our website) were reminding themselves that they'd been down this road back in September, having eventually tamed the same feline opponents despite trailing at half-time. And sure enough, despite the Panthers having the better of the early second half play, it was the Old Boys who got the goal, a wicked inswinging corner from Morgan Farrell flicked home sweetly with the outside of the foot by Mick O'Hagan. Albion got some momentum going from this, and took the lead when Hitoshi Ono broke powerfully down the left and sent in a killer cross which Morgan fired home - great finish, 2-1. Albion were hoping their opponents would now turn into cuddly kittens, but it wasn't to be. The Panthers, who became the tenth TML team this season to get a round blue plaque on their uniforms reading "Sid Lloyd Slept Here - 2008", celebrated the achievement by putting the League Supremo through on goal with a cleverly flighted pass which he dispatched with a calm lob over the keeper - 2-2, and the cue for some fiery words of encouragement from O'Hagan, which probably gave a kick up the arse to every moving object in Saitama (the pace of play from both teams on the pitch next to ours increased noticeably). So to prevent another tyrannical tirade from the volcanic Canadian the Old Boys sucked it up for one last push, won yet another corner, and were rewarded with the winning goal when Pele Clarkson rose highest at the far post to power home a header. Tough on Panthers, who probably felt they'd done enough to earn at least a share of the spoils, but these Auld Fellas are greedy bastards, whether it's in hanging on to promotion points, scarfing post-match gyoza by the dozen, popping happoshus on the three-tinnie train ride back to civilization, or extending Happy Hour until the walls start melting in the Shibuya Hobgoblin.
And so the Albion Old Boys' first season as homeless tramps ends with ten wins out of twelve games played and second spot in Division 3. But the main satisfaction has to be that despite having worn our Suica Cards down to razor-blade thinness and gaining more knowledge of the outer Tokyo suburbs than any taxi driver alive or dead, we've managed to keep the club going, we've played some good enjoyable football, and we're now only two seasons away from the Promised Land - the shimmering astroturf vision of St Mary's Green Pastures For Chronically Addicted Footballing Masters. It'll be even harder going next season - especially with the loss of key players like Mark (faster-than-a-speeding-pullet) Van der Bossche and Tommy The Cat Haussler - but we have to keep going for it, because let's face it, we're just too dim to know when to stop.
Report by Terry Cooney
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