Vintage Sink Southgate 4-1

Vintage 4 – 1 Southgate

Team: (all Vintage unless detailed) Frost (Magnets), Dunn, Harding, Kumar (Magnets), Hassaan (Magnets), Sharpe (Magnets), Abdullah (Nomad), Powdrell (Magnets), Cheng (Magnets), Beaney (Magnets), Green (Magnets), Paterson, Gorbett (Amersham), Waller (Magnets), Hitch

Selected but not wanted : Tripp, Desai
Umpires: Borrow and Reynolds/Wilson-David
Scorers: Gorbert, Cheng, Hitch, Waller

A very weird week when my computer and I seemed to be on different wavelengths. The major recipient of mistreatment was Bobby C who somehow could not have his name inserted in the teamsheet.  I have got to the stage of having a constant GMS hate! This week we were totally reliant upon the Magnets and they came up trumps – thank goodness.

Our performance was rather like the development of a butterfly – we started the game slowly and unsure rather like a caterpillar and ended it flying high. The first 14 minutes were a nightmare with Vintage not having any idea of their jobs and not recognising the players around them. Southgate only scored one goal, which was a silly one, but they could have had four or five. We did want to work on a sharp substitution system but it was so difficult to sub a forward who had not touched the ball in the first 15 minutes! But somehow we began to play together and found out where their D was. We stayed safe to half time at 0 – 1.

Then came two masterstrokes. Robert Dunn appeared having suffered from Teamo misinformation, which brought our number into question. Tripp and Desai had come changed and were amongst the subs. Desai did his limbering up around the pitch which caught the eye of their No. 8 who then complained we had too many players. This disrupted a few of the oppo. Next were some very good thoughts from Ru as to our shape and positional play etc.

Luckily the team listened and we started the second half as a different squad and started to play as a team and our attack became more effective. Eventually they broke through a very sharp reaction from Ross and we were on our way. We spread the ball about and invaded their D from all angles – the butterfly had taken wing.

Then it was Bobby’s chance to get his own back for his mistreatment. He had been given the role of right back but he played the Dunn positional way and ended up in their D with a gentle clever flick over the prostrate keeper. This was soon followed by a cross struck hard being excellently redirected by Roger H into the roof of the net – old times flooding back and must have done a decent amount to his confidence rebuild. Also it came about because he followed our agreed positional requirements in attack. The fourth goal was a very firm strike from our diplomat executive Waldo – it had the firmness of a bit of leftover uzbek.

Thank you to all the team for turning up and getting it right. Then the bar. Good social effort and we drank them out of London Pride! Decent game, fair umpiring, and good sociability – a decent Saturday.