AA4 v Redfern Raiders 05/05/13

A sunny Sunday arvo saw a rejuvenated AA4 team take on what was supposed to be a pretty weak Redfern side. Having smashed Sydney Uni 7-1 the week before, the lads were hoping for more of the same. During the team talk, B1 of Bananas in Pjamas (Wynton) claimed he wanted everyone’s name on the score sheet. The outlook looked promising.

Things took a large turn for the worse when 15 minutes before kick off there was no sign of our keeper Billy. Wynton called his phone and was not met by Billy’s voice. The person on the other end claimed he had found this phone at ‘the swimming pool’. So we feared for the worst and big Joe threw on the keepers jersey. Low and behold, 5 minutes before kick off a bedraggled looking Billy came wandering through the woods. He said he had been woken up while sleeping on the street and thinks he may have been at a swimming pool around 4am. A quick change of jerseys and we were ready to go. Ready and prepared (yup)

The game started with Redfern having all of the early possession and really running us around in the middle. After Fergal and Gav running their bollixes off for twenty minutes, it was clear a tactical change was needed. Wynton took off Nick  for the Mexican maestro Hector and changed to a 4-5-1. This change really calmed things down and evened out the game a lot. With a good one two with the Geordie extreme ironing enthusiast, John Rhodes was tripped just outside the box. Having missed the 7-1 drubbing last week because he ”was working” (in the K.E.T dpt), up stepped Geordie Dan and hit a dipping left foot strike that easily beat the larger than life Redfern keeper. A tough last five minutes of Joe and Rich winning every header in sight at the back saw the Barney boys go in 1-0 up at the break.

The second half was a serious graft. Relentless jinking runs from the Redfern number 17 had us under a lot of pressure. The lads in the middle and at the back did very well to deal with him, either winning the ball or blatantly fouling him. A series of fouls from both teams saw the game get very heated. We did not fancy a repeat of the 2nd teams Wrestlemania from the previous weekend, mainly as we didn’t have big Ken for the running spear. It all came to a head ten minutes from the end when the 6 foot 4 redfern centre back nutsed (megged) Nick H and shouted ‘NUTSSSSSSSS’ with a huge grin on his face as he did it. The team captain Nick did not take kindly to being made a fool of in front of everyone, as everyone knows there’s nothing lower than getting nutsed in public. Nick lashed out with a petty kick to the centre backs legs. This resulted in some pushing and shoving between the two. Nick clenched his fist and looked like he was about to throw a punch, but perhaps had a moment of realization due to the sheer size of the centre back and general softness of Nick himself. He pussied out. Pathetic excusce of a captain. But that wasn’t the end of it. A few of the Redfern players came rushing over looking to kick things off again. This did not bode well with a certain doctor. Doctor T came steaming over from 40 yards away and hit the centre back in (close to) the face. Some reach from the young lad as he was about two feet below the big lad. The ref did well to calm things down but it was bad news for Doctor T. He was shown red and we were forced to play the last ten minutes with ten men because 1) our captain is a soft c*nt and 2) Tony is the hardest Canadian/Lebonese Doctor in Australia.

Constant pressure ensued. With seconds left in the game Billy came to the rescue, a little flick from the redfern centre forward looked destined for the bottom corner but Billy showed some cat like reflexes to tip the ball just around the post. Maybe Billy should sleep on the street every night?

First clean sheet of the season and 2 wins in a row. Things are looking up for the AA4’s (apart from Tony, as he will almost certainly receive a long ban)