March 16: Northern Alliance vs GPR

Let me take you back roughly a day. It’s 9am Sunday morning, I’ve just got home, after narrowly avoiding shitting my pants on the way back from Dai’s place where I’d been indulging in curry, beers and silly cigarettes (See an additional chapter in the 2008 reprint of ‘Well out Dai – a season with the Northern Alliance and some’ entitled ‘These smell more like mixed herbs than draw Bernie’). It’s about ten minutes from the bus stop and I really thought I was going to completely shit myself, on my own road, minutes from my flat. Not pleasant.

Neither was the weather (good link from one paragraph to another I thought), I’ve a text and a phone call and we’re down to 9. It’s hammering it down outside and there’s two Premiership games on the box later, I’m in bed and it’s warm, but not a wet warm thankfully. I’m minutes from calling it off and settling down for a relaxing wank when I get an interruption. It’s Paul on the blower.

‘Alright Bernie’, ‘Alright Paul’, ‘how many we got?’, ‘We’ve only got 9, me, you, your mate, Jeff, his mate, Tommy, Iain, Micah, Gibbsy, and Liam. Ooh hang on a minute, that might be 10, I may have miscounted. Me, you, Jeff, his mate, you and your mate, Gibbsy, Liam, Micah, Tommy and me. Yep 10’

‘We cannae play with 10’ (that’s Paul by the way, I hadn’t just become a professional Geordie). ‘No, but we are’ against my better judgement. Next thing I know Dan’s bringing his boots despite being on crutches and we’ve got a 11. Bring it on.

At the ground, everyone is there just about, but no Micah. Luckily, John, a chap hanging around near our goal, piped up and said he was up for a game so we started with me in goal, John at left back, Flec (at right back, Jeff’s mate), Gibbsy and Liam at centre back, with a four across midfield of Jeffrey, Richie (Paul’s mate), Iain and Tommy, with Paul and Dan up front. It’s windy and rainy, and frankly standing in goal was no fun, and I thought we were 2-1 odds on for a real hiding from GPR.

The first half wasn’t much to write home about (and frankly I think my mother would see to it that I’d becoming straight home, and never going out again, if she’d read the above content, and therefore I wouldn’t need to write home at all). Micah turned up and decided to bollock the whole team for a good 30 minutes. Well done Micah. They scored two goals – one was unfortunate, a rebound went to their striker’s head who duly stuck it further enough away from me for to contemplate a dive. 1-0. Second goal was sloppy and poor, and I probably should have come for the corner but ball watched as did everyone else and the aforementioned striker stuck it away with his head again. We’d played some decent stuff, but without really threatening. John was making inroads down the left, and clearly had played before, as he glided past the opposition with consummate ease.

Crucially, they’d had the wind in the first half. And at Kennington, as we’ve found to our cost this season, that has some bearing on the end result. I assume Paul won the toss, and chose it like that. So well done Paul. Half time – Jeff’s getting ear ache from his mrs about the cold so he comes off for Micah and we go 4-3-3 with Micah taking the third striking birth, and bringing his bollockings on to the pitch. After making copious notes in the first half, Micah had outlined to the boys who was causing us problems and if we shut them out we’d have a chance. A career in football management lies ahead for this lad when he hangs his boots up.

Second half was a completely different story. A new power was rising in the shape of a 4-3-3. Gibbsy announced to me that he wanted to stick it to them. Suddenly it was a class war too. Apart from a few break aways, and one in particular early on in the second half where their striker should have made it three and claimed his hat trick, the Alliance had the power play. Tommy, Dan and Paul linked up well. Flec, Gibbsy and Liam had it sorted at the back which allowed John several forays up the left to provide us another attacking angle with Iain and Richie winning the midfield battle. GPR didn’t want it. Spurred on by Micah, the Alliance did. And the game started to turn. After some neat play, Paul was put through and he finished with a cool finish the like of which his play has not seen in recent weeks. 2-1 and GPR were losing it, they’d dropped deep and allowed us to come on to them. Plus the wind also helped. We had several chances – Paul, Dan, Iain, Tommy were all having a go. Dan particularly should have cleaned up – not showing many signs of a man with ligament damage. The pain goes away when you are through on goal…

I think it was a corner or may be a cross, after a corner had been cleared. A flick possibly and Richie’s in at the back post. 2-2 and there’s enough time to win it. And lose it too. GPR has switched back on and were causing us a few problems although we were still stronger. Their keeper has had to pull off a couple of decent saves. Then there’s a scramble in their box, with Dan at the centre of it. He’s lobbed the keeper in the middle of a hand ball claim to score. But the ref had already blown for a hand ball but decides to give a free kick outside the box despite the fact I could tell from the other end it was in the box. GPR kept very quiet. They knew they’d got lucky with that.

It was all getting passionate out there. Paul and his mate Richie didn’t start tonguing or anything but Micah was inspiring the boys, less with his play more with his encouragements, to press home the advantage. At one point, I thought we’d turned into Green Oak Moreton as Tommy, Iain, Micah and Dan got involved in an internal bust up. Passions were high. We could take our second successive 3 points to boost us up the league.

We didn’t though. We came close. John had a free kick tipped round the post, we had a few corners were we went close, plus he had a mazy run in their box and Micah put one just over the bar too.

At the end it was 2-2. A proud day for the Alliance. A moral victory scored. Eton Riffles if you will. And like Micah Capello said at the end – give yourselves a round of applause, that’s a great come back (to be fair I’m probably paraphrasing some Churchill inspired prose!). And he may or may not have said this but essentially the sentiment was that we should be proud of our performance this week.

MOM this week goes to Liam who was very solid at the back. Although there were many solid performances. Also big thanks to Richie, who scored and was quietly effective with probing passes, and Flec, who look like he’d played there all day (in fact he had, it was his second 90 minutes in a matter of hours), and John, who hopefully we’ll see again.