Lost 0-3
Scorers: N/A
MoM: see report
DoD: see report
With thanks to team sponsor MFri
The match on Saturday against high flying New Beccehamians was always going to be a tough day for the Friars due to injuries and unavailabilities. An early 10.30 push back in the near freezing weather at Beckenham, also hadn’t helped to boost their pre match motivation. Indeed a certain Mr P. Dowling stated on the Whats App group he was still in bed at 8.29 but still made the PB.
So fielding a bare eleven with players in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s they took to the Astro to find an opposition doing what the Friars later found out was called a ‘warm up’.
Even our token youngster Friar Arun at just 21 was heard saying ‘they look young’ and so the signs didn’t look good.
With the opposition playing in green and yellow, we had to pull on our second strip. Unfortunately Corporal Tiny Jones had brought yellow and so there was still a clash, but at least playing with two shirts would keep the Friars a little warmer and hopefully confuse the opposition. He should have got Dud of the Day for that but in a spirit of that great Frenchie Alex. Dumas “All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall”, it wasn’t ‘awarded’. Our very own home bred “Alex” (Cllr Ricketts) epitomises this never say die spirit though his sidekick Mr. J. Blackburn is fast learning the ropes in this dept. (get on with the report -ed)
The game started and the Friars managed to hold out for a good 60 seconds before conceding the first goal. A worrying start but the Friars battled hard and managed to get to half time and much needed Jaffa Cakes still only 1-0 down.
Unfortunately there wasn’t enough Jaffa Cakes (and even those had not been laced with the usual snifter) to fully replenish the tanks and the Friars despite battling hard throughout finally went down 3-0.
A great team performance and a special mention to James Norman for a great Friars debut (although he will be now known as just Norman or “Norm” as it’s too confusing for the Friars to have two James’ in the team).
The Friars have also learnt not to highlight good individual performances in their match reports for fear of losing those players to higher teams the following week… so therefore Arun was just average! 😉 so the team wins MoM.
(Another debutante is The Scribbler of this report. All Friars match reports are and always have been anonymous (to avoid legal writs) and with Scribbler 1 injured, Scribbler 2 “on leave”, Scribbler 3 delegated the job to Scribbler 4 who actually volunteered the above well written missive for which many thanks. He is of great hockey pedigree, indeed a giant amongst mythical pygmies so knows what he’s writing about pip pip – ed.)
Onwards to the Panto in Ash on Friday in which Corporal Jones and his fragrant wife are the lead actors. Tickets on sale (cheap seats for all the CHC members) from all the usual outlets, heckling obligatory, oh no it isn’t ………..