Conversations:
Master O on the phone, triumphant:
“I carried out my first resuscitation in A&E today!”
“Well done you – who was the patient?”
“An elderly man, in his 80’s”
“Brilliant job! How’s he doing now?”
“Well I went back to see him an hour later. He’d died.”
R, my buddy in Bridport, exasperated (as usual):
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s the problem, mate?”
“I’ve got 4 Hollands meat and potato pies in the freezer!”
“OK … so …. Why don’t you cook them?”
“I can’t stand the pastry – it plays havoc with my indigestion.”
“So why did you buy them then?”
“They were on special offer …..”
A glum looking bird sitting by the computer contemplating fixtures:
“So where shall we go today, Ossie?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been getting a lot of stick recently.”
“In what way?”
“They’re fed up with the Dorset League Division 4. They want something more exciting. Like Manchester United. Or Ipswich.”
"IPSWICH??"
"Well, perhaps not ...."
"Anyway, you can’t be doing stadia like those, bird. You haven’t got a Covid passport. And I can’t afford it!”
“Well we’ll have to come up with something …..”
“It’s a right puzzle, isn’t it?”
“I know! Let’s throw a party!!”
“Shush, you daft bird! You don’t want things like that doing the rounds! There might be a video! Heavens, the Daily Mail ….”
“I don’t care! Let’s make merry! Let’s have a proper quiz, none of your virtual stuff!!”
“Listen, Ostrich, the last time you got invited to a party, you finished it upside down and legless underneath the table! And put that cider bottle down!”
“Actually, I’ve thought of something much better than Division 4!”
“What?”
“Division 3 ! Hic!!!”
Well, a scan of the games listed on the FA FullTime website threw up nothing interesting in Division 3, (or Division 5 for that matter), so the Ostrich was consigned to a cold, miserable afternoon back at South Cheriton United’s Vernalls Field, an unpleasant experience that was exacerbated by light rain driven horizontal on the back of a blustery wind. I think since my last visit there a few weeks back, “No Dogs” and “No Parking” signs have been fixed to the entrance gate, (thankfully no "No Ostriches”) so with parking being limited to the lay-by outside the ground, I luckily got the last but one berth, (and the referee the last), about 20 minutes before kick-off. The restored “second pitch” now has one side partially roped and was freshly mown and lined out, but I think it’s mainly used for training, given the fact there’s 4 goalposts!
RLS FC Yellows, the opposition for the Cherries’ high-flying Reserves are newcomers to the Yeovil and District League this season and, according to the referee, are a team consisting of Romanian emigres, a mixture of some very good players and ones making up the numbers (he’d refereed them twice before this season). Their shirt sponsor is “DJ Kenzie”, which is not a firm, but (if I’ve put 2 and 2 together correctly) a mobile disc jockey – he seems to have regular gigs in and around Langport, Somerset which is where RLS are based, sharing a pitch at the Recreation Ground with Langport Town, another new team on the block. Their manager kept up a non-stop commentary for the whole 90 minutes – in Romanian – with plenty of “Bravo!”s – but I couldn’t tell if “Andrei” and “Alex” were being praised or berated. I could have done with an interpreter!
Cherries Reserves started the game in pole position, having won 11 and drawn 1 in 12 matches this season. That draw was the reverse fixture to this one, back in October, and it was a 0-0, so I was definitely tempting fate this afternoon! The visitors were 3rd in the 12 team table. Noticeably, a third of the Yeovil & District league fixtures today were postponed, including my back-up at Templecombe. The weather or Omicron?
Writing this match report in my head half way through the second-half (as one does!), I’d have said that “the three points were won and lost on the back of a single incident” – after 29m, the RLS keeper charged out of goal to intercept a loose ball which was being hotly pursued by Cherries’ 9 and his own no.6. He got to the ball first, but his booted clearance unfortunately cannoned off his own defender and ricocheted the 15 yards back into the net. Apart from that, the game was a rather rumbustious affair in which the much-vaunted Cherries attack never really got going, and RLS, for all their pressure, weren’t creating much of anything up front either.
The old-school referee had his work cut out in the light of some pretty hefty tackling and over-dramatic appealing, and it seriously looked like being a 1-0 game until the home team struck a second goal on the counterattack on 84m, no.11 getting round the defence and scoring with a well-placed shot into the far corner of the net. Time for one last bit of drama, an 87th minute goalmouth melee in which the ball appeared to get diverted off a post and out, but the referee saw a penalty in there somewhere – hotly contested; even the away club linesman was on the pitch and in the thick of it, protesting – but justice was done, I think, when Cherries’ 10 placed the spot-kick against the cross-bar. 3-0 would have been a bit of a travesty.
A rapid trip home for a large and piping-hot mugga tea, whilst reflecting I’m getting too old now for standing around in muddy fields on a bitingly-cold December’s day ….. a pretty good game at the end of the day, though.
11/12/21: Yeovil & District League Division 2
South Cheriton United Reserves 2 RLS FC Yellows 0No admission charge.
No refreshments available for miles around – I had to make do with a pack of 6 Aldi mini pork and apple pies (£1.49) – quite tasty, you could certainly get the apple.
Attendance: 4 hardy souls
