Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Knackered 10 drew Red Devils 10

Daniel and Adrian were otherwise occupied this week, so we took the field as a tight-knit team of three. Our opponents numbered 8, and used the full-squad-transfusion tactic to swap the bench 4 for the on-court 4 throughout the game.

We were not surprised to be 3-0 down pretty quickly. They offered us one of theirs, but as they had all taken the field for Red Devils already the ref wouldn't allow anyone to change sides.

Pretty soon we got on the scoreboard anyway. They were young and fit like most guys in the roster, but not all that skilled, and a bit lazy. Paul went wild and netted four goals in as many minutes. As goalies are confined to their semicircle, it was 2-on-3 in the outfield, and our 2 were running hard enough to shut down their 3, steal the ball, run with it, shoot and score.

I was pretty shot after about ten minutes of this, but we were keeping up on the scoreboard. We actually staggered in to half time in front about 6-4.

They came at us quite hard after the break, but never quite got in front. As time passed we started to believe we could do it. With one minute to go it was 9-9, and I was prepared to settle for the draw. Then Brett slotted another goal, and we tried to run down the clock.

I was keeping at this point, and the boys kept passing back to me. I took my time, rolled it out, got it back. Eventually Paul got sick of this, tried to make a break downfield, lost the ball and suddenly a powerful shot came back, took a deflection off him and cannoned past me for a goal. 10-10 with four seconds left. A bit disappointing but a pretty good effort all the same.

No comments: