Tough Result for Depleted Vintage at Eastcote
By Paddy Tripp
Vintage 3 - 5 Eastcote Past Masters
Team (all Vintage unless detailed): Silverleaf, Bishop (OCs), Bamford (H&W), Cheng (Magnets), Abdullah (Nomad), Tallboys (H&W), Beaney C (Magnets), Paterson, Tripp, Lowe
Umpires: Eastcote
Scorers: Paterson, Abdullah, Lowe
Two games in a row postponed – it could not get worse… but it could. Covid struck where you least want it – KEEPER! Spent the whole week exploring emails, texts, Whatsapp, keeperfind, anybodythere etc to no avail until 10pm on Friday night on Whatsapp… but I didn’t check there. Phones are now a thing of the past or you don’t know how to find out someone’s number.
Nonetheless we had ten as did they, but they had a keeper. But someone got confused in the email shower and went to the wrong pitch so we started nine against ten and no keeper which made it a bit easy for them. 2-0 down in no time but we got one back through Rowley.
Fear set in each time they were awarded a short corner but they only took the advantage once out of ten efforts – many were down to good defending. Also luckily, their shooting was incredibly inaccurate. They scored again but we responded through one of the Bobbies who scored from a pass by another Bobby but they scored again. Our third Bobby then arrived moaning and irritable but with first touch he deflected the ball into the goal!
The second half was pretty even but they did score once more. Basically, if I had seen the 10.00 Whatsapp, we would have won 4-1. So I suppose it is all my fault. It is difficult to take on board that 20 of our possible players were not available through injury, half-term, Covid etc… but that’s life for the Over 60s!
Sadly, there were no changing facilities at the ground and it was closer to home than the clubhouse – so only three of our team had a beer with our opposition.