Camden FC 5 - 2 Crayford Arrows
04 November 2007 - Report by Paul O'Brien
..AND THEY'RE OFF!!!
Starting Lineup: Monkey, Jake, Catty (c), Dave Lee, Ginge, Paul, Ash, Dan Ahern, Mike Harvey, Ben, Chris Subs: Kaan, Jamie
Crowd: numerous raspberries inc. Burge, Macca and Kirk. Several parents including mine as a cameo
**Martin Tyler on the mike, alongside Andy Gray, camera pans around the starters all warming up and kicking a ball about, clad in training tops, before showing the bench and management all chewing various flavours of gum**
“Home team in red today while Crayford Arrows travel to Flamingo Park in their change strip of White and Black stripes. As we look around the Camden we see a threadbare squad that took only 10 players to Abbey Wanderers last week. On the treatment table are Kirk, Lee Burge, Macca and Matt Prentice while Kadu politely waits the table they lay treated on. Holiday-based absences for Dorm Balastoichkov and Loul who sun themselves in the Canary Islands. Ginge passes a late fitness test and start at left back while Kaan and Jamie risk themselves to return on the bench after lengthy layoffs. Ben and Paul start against their former club for the first time”
Wayne is already the Camden’s utility player, having played in goal, lone striker and today’s position of right back. For what reason I don’t actually know, but from the start of this season I have been accidently calling Wayne by a different moniker of ‘Jake’, and I have no plans for this to end.
The changing room doors were locked and nobody permitted to “quick rush out in case we have to take the balls and water bottles to the pitch” while Colonel Dave Lee pulled out a speech to get the team to raise their game after last weeks debacle. A good solid two hours later we were running out onto the pitch after a Henry-V-at-Agincourt style talking to. It is not clear whether this aroused us all (or simply roused us), or if whatever followed was merely a coincidence
After having told mum what colour we were playing in and what number I would be wearing, this still did not stop her from watching the wrong game on the wrong pitch for a while until casually wondering away. Finding the pitch we were playing on, she stood somewhere in the middle of the two sets of supporters. It was then that she experienced Jim Ware, who asked her for a brief rundown of how Crayford Arrows got to where they are, before they established they supported the same team. None of this had anything to do with Dave Lee’s speech.
Camden started brightly, and refreshingly from the first whistle produced an attack resulting in a Camden corner. The majority of play was for those in red shirts, until the first away corner of the day produced a towering leap by Dave Lee and powerful header outwards, which took a somewhat unfortunate whack on the back of Dan Ahearn’s head and into the net. 0-1, somewhat against the run of play.
Only about a quarter of an hour gone and another corner to the away side. Another ball in at the near post and some fella called Jack rose ahead of his marker, me, and flicked on into the far post. 0-2 and again I wouldn’t have said they were worth the “this is gonna be a walkover” 2-0 lead so early into the game. It is worth a mention that Catty showed extreme composure in the box when trying to eliminate the threat of a Crayford Arrows attack by holding onto the ball for almost 30 seconds before being wiped out by an attacker then complaining, despite the fact the ball should’ve left his feet ages before
Chris had the better of any defender whom cared to try and mark him, and in running through to put himself one on one with the keeper he finished with aplomb to the goalkeeper’s right hand side, and now a game was on. 1-2
All that was needed it seems, was for Chris to simply pick the ball up along the sidelines, outrun about 2 defenders, go past another in the box as he cut in, then finish inside the keeper’s near post. Something like that, sounds simple enough, so that’s what Chris did about 5 minutes after his first effort, swearing and gesturing wildly after the finish. 2-2
The Itch express being more of a personal narrative, I now move onto the Paul O’Brien bit in the “what I did today” section. Regular itch express readers will remember a Welsh Tavern report from last year featuring special guest columnist Mark Weyman in the “what I did today section”. This week sees Paul’s adventures took me into the penalty box while defending a free kick, where after tickling the bum of their big striker, he threatened me. My response was to tickle his bum once more. My punishment was a – poorly executed – elbow to the face. In the melee that followed, he also got Dan Ahearn and Catty in headlocks threatening to ‘take you all on’ (ref saw this as he tried to separate it). The ref bizarrely allowed the fella (after elbowing one Camden player and wrestling 2 others) to stay on the pitch booking-free, but he was never the same player for the rest of the game, clearly fearing another bum tickling. The referee’s role in this was to give Catty, their elbowman and myself a talking to along the lines of “I didn’t see what happened, but if I did, you’d all be walking”. I have looked up the FA book of rules for this one to see why catty and me would be walking for our parts whilst elbowman didn’t, and unearthed the following rules...
Rule 89 (3.i)
If the referee deems that a player is seen to be in a headlock for any reason, it is deemed as a professional foul by that player and a red card should be shown, although this can be discretionary and a yellow can suffice in extreme conditions
Rule 128 (4.ii)
If a player elbows a member of the opposing team in the face, then you watch as he tries to wrestle 2 (or more) other member(s) of said opposition do not send him off. Or book him.
Rule 28 (9.iv)
No bum tickling. Red card if you do
The 'The Dannonball' Ahearn also ended up picking up a yellow after a mouthing off when a blatant take-out on Chris in the box was missed / ignored by the ref. To be fair the ref was missing or allowing questionable fouls and handballs for both sides, but it seemed like a compeer of a child’s party, letting things slide to try and let things flow. Like a shout of “no!” before anyone even appealed one handball, an acknowledgement which could only imply he had seen it, the next step was clearly to wait until the pass-the-parcel got to the birthday boy before stopping agadoo and letting him unwrap the fun size mars bars therein.
In a point where I believe the momentum was a red one but in theory the game could’ve gone either way, out of position left winger Mike Harvey was left with an open goal to shoot at to give us the lead. But Mike only blazed across the face of the goal when it would’ve been easier to score. Miss of the game goers to Mike, and he will enjoy it as he earned it
Ben Whitehead. Goal. 3-2. Rounded the keeper for the effort and calmly jogged away after putting us ahead for the first time of the game. Not one for celebrating goals (I see them as useful stopping points to take on fluids or rest), this time I was geared up on elbow, so I calmly celebrated with Ben by rugby tackling him to the floor and nibbling his neck sensually.
Corner time. God knows why we got the first one, but an in swinging corner was cleared over the bar by the opposition defence, leading to a corner o the other side. While jogging to take this I noticed Ben had made use of the previous attack by jumping and clinging onto the bar after the ball sailed over. The second corner also put behind by the defence, I had to take the final one from the original position and as getting quite jetlagged due to the travelling, so was pleased when the corner wasn’t cleared properly and fell to Chris, who lashed in his hat-trick effort to put clear daylight between the teams at 4-2
Another attack as Crayford gave up at the back, and Ashley (quite absent from the report so far despite having a good game) surged into the box from the left hand side, cut the ball back and someone, whoever it was, tried a shot-cum-cross which Paul controlled and scored on the turn. 5-2 and completely confirmed. The rest of the game was like a training exercise for the attackers as we could have had a few more had the finishing been better. Ben was put for a chase with the keeper and defender to the ball, and when falling over shouted mid-fall “fucckkin ellllll reffffff” to laughter from home and away sides at such an appeal
Sun star man went to Chris Ware, and special congratulations to Medium sized Jon Lee who had Dan Ahearn (oggie), Paul, Ben, Chris Ware and Noe Pamarot amongst his goal scorers in PPL this week