"You're a bit intense aren't you?" inquired the opposition's coach as I booted our drinks tray in the direction of Mars, after one of my players had just passed the ball with pace similar to that of a constipated slow worm.
“If this is what you’re like when you’re winning,” continued this now really irritating little woman, “What are you like when you’re loosing?”
“What you need to do,” persisted this lady from Southwell, “is to chill out, and get a life.”
“I’ve g
ot a life, thank you, and it’s hockey,” I curtly replied, not realising that what she really wanted me to do was to poke her in the eye with one of my marker pens.
It’s a good job Ms Good Riddance never met Bill Shankly otherwise she would have imploded on the spot.
”Football isn’t a matter of life and death,” the legendary Shankly once said. “It’s more important than that.”
Judging by the way the Baileans second team celebrated their thrilling victory at Bingham, Shankly may have had a point.
“We can all enjoy Christmas now,” enthused captain Danni Archer, “because we’ve got seventeen ‘pints’ on the table.”
Meanwhile, ‘under the table’ is the Baileans first team coach Heath Roberts who is still so depressed at his team’s defeat at Bedford, that he’s still under there now!
“I feel like one of those premier league football managers who’s so embarrassed at their team’s result, that he sends one of his flunkeys out to face the cameras!”
Now if Heath wanted to know the definitive definition of the word depression, then all he needed to do was phone Gareth Davis, Derby County’s webmaster, who was at Burnley.
“Baz, it’s worse than horrible.
“Three down after 20 minutes, fog may save us.
“What’s happening at Matlock?”
Now that was a tricky question.
A combination of swirling fog and floodlights, not wanting to contribute to global warming, meant, if standing behind a goal, you couldn’t see past the half-way line.
Then came the ‘red mist’ as a couple of Worksop players opted for an early bath and a spot of Christmas shopping, while murky Matlock headed for defeat.
But out of the gloom and doom, up popped Jamie Jackson to score one of the best goals ‘never seen’ at Causeway Lane.
One not to be ‘mist’ as Jacko dribbled round three, four or five players, running thirty, forty or fifty yards before scoring - apparently.
Intense? You’re damn right!
The full article contains 430 words and appears in Matlock Mercury newspaper.
