I get home from soccer and I am about to have a nap before heading out last night, and I get a call from Josh, a friend of mine that I went to school with, that is also on my brother, Iain’s, soccer team. I start the call with “Josh! How are you man? Haven’t heard from you in a while, what’s been happening?” to which I get a “uhh… you’re brother’s actually just broken his leg at soccer, we’re trying to call an ambulance now…”

I told my Dad, but there wasn’t really anything we could do except wait until the ambulance arrived, and see where they were taking him. Dad then drove me out to Stockton, where they had obviously played, where Josh was waiting for me to give me Iain’s stuff and his car keys for me to drive his car home. We arrived not long after the ambulance left, seeing it going the opposite way.

It turns out, what happened, was Iain and an opposing player both went in hard for the ball and clashed legs, Iain coming out for the worse. The opposing player was very apologetic, and apparently was in shock over what had happened. Rumours that Iain’s shin-pad had snapped were debunked, even though that would have been an amazing addition to the story.

I managed to drive Iain’s car home without issue, even though it had been a while since I last drove a manual. When visiting him later in hospital (RNC Room 26, Urology and Rheumatology Ward), I find that he has posted some pictures on Wotev.com detailing his experience. You can also find a couple of these pictures below.

It started off pretty dodgy, they got a player from their club that was going to play in the game after ours to referee, which seemed alright until he called half time 6 minutes early, not to mention he had to swap with some other guy half way through the second half to go and get changed for his game…

The first half was really tight, they were playing pretty well, but it went 0-0 into the break. About 10 minutes into the second half Billy did an awesome run down the left, around a bunch of guys, kicked it between a couple of players and scored. We got a bit excited and thought that we might be able to pull through with a win, but not long later, they manages to get a lucky header in. We got fired up and managed to get another goal, but they got an equalizer when Trent twisted his ankle and went down to the ground, I tried to cover a bit for him, but it left a hole and they were able to score from the other side of the goals.

The next time they came in for a goal, Bob did a good save and stopped the ball from going in, but wasn’t able to get a good hold of it, fumbled it and went to jump on the ball, but it rolled out from under him and went in. If the referee was a good, neutral ref, then, in my opinion, he would have called that as a penalty when there was contact from their players with our keeper. We were a little bit disheartened, still desperately trying to get another goal, but somehow they managed to get another only a few minutes later.

There were 6 goals in the space of about 20 minutes, which we were hoping meant that we would still be able to get another 2 goals, but they started to waste time by kicking it as far out as they can when they got the ball. We “got another goal” in the last couple of minutes of the game, but it was called offside because one of our players was in the offside position, but he didn’t interfere with play, so I think that was just the ref being biased, but I could be wrong, but it still wouldn’t have made a difference to the outcome; Dudley won, 4-2, which I can live with, because they were the team at the top of the table for almost the whole season (I think for all but 3 of 14 rounds, or something like that).

Most of the team went across the road to Dudley pub for a couple of drinks, but, for the second week in a row, I forgot to bring my wallet, but this time they asked for ID, so I just had a coke… Which was probably for the best, because last week I wasn’t able to drive home…

It was a tight game today, lots of close calls on both sides, but luckily, only one goal was scored, and it was by us. AJ scored the goal, he was left unmarked when Billy took a corner, and AJ put it in the back of the net.

If we win next week’s game against Dudley, then we finish top of the table. If we draw, we will still be first unless Stockton beat Cooks Hill by 12 goals. If we lose, it’s likely that we will be third, unless there are a few upsets with the other games, in which case, we could still place better than third.

Coming into this game, we knew that it was an important match. Last week’s game was rained out, and is being replayed tomorrow (vs South Wallsend), so, being a game behind, we had a better idea of the results we needed to get into the finals. If we were to win both this weekend, we would definitely be in the finals, with next week’s game (the last game in the season) deciding whether we were first or second. If we were to lose both of the games this weekend, we wouldn’t make it into the finals at all. Drawing both games would make it very tight, depending on how the other teams go.

The first half was pretty close, and Argenton was probably playing a little better than we were, but no goals were scored. They played a little dirty, I copped a “stray” arm in the side of the head while defending a guy that wasn’t even near the ball, but other than that, I didn’t get much of it, apart from a guy in my back just before half time, which I got a penalty for.

In the second half of the game, we started to attack more, and got 3 or 4 corners in a row. Tides turned a little though, and they got a couple of good opportunities, but our goalie, Bob, managed to shut them down and make a couple of good saves. About 15 minutes into the second half, they got a corner on the left, me being on the far post, and one of their players unfortunately was able to get a shot on from around the near post, and I wasn’t able to move across quick enough, and it hit the side of my hip and went in.

After that, we were struggling a bit, and everyone was a little worried, but luckily for us, on one of our attacks, they got pulled up for pushing one of our players in the back inside the box, so we got a dot shot. Our left midfield player, Billy, was able to easily put it away, giving us an equaliser, which lifted our spirits a bit, and we started attacking a lot more.

With a few more attacks, one of our forwards, Andrew, was able to outrun the last defender, and was left with just him against the goalie. Andrew had missed a bunch of times throughout the season, kicking it into the back of his other foot half a metre in front of an open goal as well as going for a shot and then missing the ball and falling over. He also hadn’t come to training for a couple of weeks, where we had done a lot of practice on placement instead of just booting it, so I was a little worried, but hopeful. He was about a metre to the right of the goal, and little bit further out, he kicked the ball, and it went around the goalie to the left, and was rolling along, and I couldn’t tell if it was going in or not, and it drifted into the side of the net just before others were able to get there. I’m not certain, however, that that kick was intended to do as it did, but it gave us the advantage of 2-1.

I was a little worried that we would not be able to keep the lead, but luckily we kept playing just as well as we were, and managed to keep the lead until full time. Unfortunately, we can’t celebrate as hard as we would like, because we still need to be able to play tomorrow, which is unfortunate, because I was going to go to a birthday party in town tonight…

We had heaps of opportunities, as always, but Cooks Hill were the first (and second) to put the ball in the net. We picked up our game a bit and managed to catch up by half time, scoring two goals, but (as always) missing out on dozens of opportunities. I was coughing and spluttering all over the place for about 3/4 of the first half of the match, but my mouth dried up after that, and luckily I seemed to stop the coughing as well.

When we went on for the second half, some of their players were starting to get worked up, and playing a bit rough, but we managed to slot one away to make it 3-2 in our favour. When it was my turn to come off, a one of their guys started pushing Jeff around a bit. The Ref wasn’t calling much. When I came back on, the second time I went for the ball, I went to run around a guy, and could have easily beat him to the ball, he stuck out his hand and pushed me so I couldn’t get to the ball. Later, one of the guys comes running through, passes the ball away and doesn’t bother to try and slow down or go around me, and brings up his arms, and comes straight through me, pushing me to the ground. They were (obviously) starting to not play very nice, and they managed to score another goal out of it.

Just before the Ref blew the whistle for the end of the game, it went out for a corner to them, and then the Ref blew the whistle for full time and the guy that had started with Jeff argued with the Ref.

As usual, we should have won. We always seem to have many many more goal scoring opportunities that we don’t seem to score from, and we defend against their attacks really well. Attack is good, we just can’t seem to get the ball into the net. I think this week’s training will be much like the the last few weeks; plenty of shooting practice.

Well, unfortunately, I’ve spent pretty much the last 7 days in bed with a cold I’ve got a soccer game at Marks Point that starts at 3… And I’m pretty sure I got my cold from one of the other guys in the team (points finger at Adrian) and that a few of the other team members have also caught a cold from him too. As you can see in the table, the top 5 teams are all very close.

I will post again after the game.