Vintage Beat Bottom of the Table St Albans

Vintage 3 – 2 St Albans Centurions

Team (all Vintage unless detailed): Frost (Magnets), Cheng (Magnets),, Bishop (OC’s), Kumar (Magnets), Kant (Holiday), Beaney C (Magnets), Green (Magnets), Aparicio (OC’s), Sanders (OC’s), Lowe, Hitch, Paterson

Sub not used (frozen fingers): Tripp

Umpires: St Albans

Scorers: Green, Beaney (2)

An hour’s journey to the game, which turned into a nightmare. I forgot that my satnav did not have a clue where AL4 0AJ was two years ago and, damnit, it had not changed but then it still thinks Hammersmith Bridge is open! So round the suburbs of St Alban’s I go getting more and more angry – no human beings around but at last I find one. Out comes phone and he guides me – turn car around and satnav gives exactly the same directions. Late for game.

The pitch was in a very open area and the subs benches had no side panels. The freezing wind was absolutely vicious. Standing about was torturous. It was not the fastest of games and very even. We didn’t help matters by being in third gear most of the time, which lead to them taking the lead. We woke up a bit and managed to score two goals from Green (Beaney assist) and Beaney.

Half time was space for the holidaymaker to meet people, Admin to make small positional changes and Ru to express some sensible advice. And the result showed that some had listened but it didn’t stop them equalizing. But we stuck to our improvement and even managed to string 15 passes together and eventually we got the winner – a strong strike from Beaney – who had never scored two in one game before.

Pleasant social session in the converted classroom when we had thawed out – yet another Grandmasters game played in a healthy sporting manner. And, unbelievably, the satnav got me home in time for Strictly.