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Oi Futo, Saturday 29th November
Oh no, here we go again. Cue trumpets playing theme tune from 'Rocky' over footage of the aging but still brilliant Ali in Kinshasha doing his rope-a-dope on the much younger, much fitter George Foreman. I'm sure many of you are getting fed up with reading this "Outnumbered-Old Geezers-Prevail-Over-Numerically-And-Chronologically-Advantaged-Opponents" piece, but it keeps happening, and though it's getting harder to describe these Groundhog Days in a different way each time, I don't get get fed up writing about them, especially when the Old Boys have taken three points off Zion FC, one of the top teams in Division 2, with a thoroughly deserved 3-1 victory.
Kick off time approaches on a beautiful blue late autumn midday at Oifuto, and it's the usual story for the Not-Quite-So-Beautiful Blue Late Autumn Albion Old Boys as the pre-match discussion focuses on those formations they don't teach in the UEFA coaching handbooks - the formations you use when you have ten men against sixteen on a pitch that is far too big to run round in the warm-up. Ten became eleven when Albion's Silver Supremo Karl Twohig finally hove into view seconds before kickoff, and then it became ten-and a-half when he reported that he had a twisted ankle and had been planning on being an unused sub. Well our twenty-something Gallic youth provider Cyrille had gone AWOL (un histoire trop tristesse pour reporter ici), so the Krocked Karl had to give it a go in the centre of defence, a role he performed as well as a man with three good ankles.
Though this first half wasn't quite the Rorke's Drift re-enactment of last week, when a Nine-Man Thin (suck those beerguts in boys) Blue Line held firm against the massed hordes of H United, there's no doubt that Zion had more of the play. But it did resemble the last game in showcasing yet again the Old Boys' ability to make their chances count, when about halfway through the half they took the lead after their first corner of the game, James Moon pouncing on a hurried Zion clearance and striking a 25-yard volley that went in arrow-straight off the inside of the post. And a few minutes later debutant Sam doubled the lead with a goal that was almost as tasty as the ales of his namesake and fellow Bostonian Mr Adams - a neat flick-on from fellow striker George Pele Clarkson and a cool finish from Sam to lob the ball over the advancing keeper. Zion narrowed the deficit late in the first half when a Zion striker was first to the loose ball after Kouka had done well to beat out a fierce close range shot, but apart from that they hadn't given the Old Boys' defence too many problems.
The Old Boys restored their two-goal advantage early in the second half. Sam laid a short ball back to Naoki Ogasawara, just outside the Zion box, who played a clever diagonal ball into the area. The Zion keeper seemed to take out one of his own defenders as he tried to claim the ball, and Rod Cramblit was there to take advantage with a cool finish. And a few minutes later it could have been four as Rob MacGregor was unlucky to see his shot flash just the wrong side of the post after another neat move. That proved to be pretty much Albion's final foray into the Land of Zion as the huge pitch, the lack of subs, and the combined exertions of two short-handed games in eight days started to take their toll on the Old Boys' legs. The rest of the game was a case of "what we have, we hold," and in fact we held on pretty comfortably. Zion went close once with a very well executed overhead kick that missed by about a yard, but that was the only time in the second half that Kouka's goal was threatened. Another three points, and another very impressive display against good opposition
Fifteen months ago some of the Albion Old Boys had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this league after the temporary loss of our pitch at St Mary's International School made it necessary for us to wander in the wilderness of Greater Tokyo for at least three years before we can enter our own footballing Zion. We were quite happy to say thanks but no thanks to our promotion from Division 3 last year, until we were told that declining promotion was not an option. And if playing at this Division 2 level at our age against all these genki and skillful young guys is like hitting yourself over the head with a high-heeled shoe (lovely when it stops), then a promotion into the top division would be like inviting the whole Follies Bergeres chorus line to dance on your head for nine months. Nevertheless, the talk in the pub after the game was (amongst a million other things) about the difference between the TML league table, where the Old Boys have 8 points from six games and are boringly mid-table, and our own moral-victories-fcuk-the-red-tape-and-all-that-point-deduction-crap league table, where our on-the-field record of three wins, one draw and just one defeat (against the team that are running away with the league) has us chugging along in second behind FC International and thinking about which teams we need to go easy on. You can't stop winners wanting to win, even when it's not in their best interest.
Match report by Terry Cooney
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