Nannas 6 play FD United 7
Attendees: DC, GF (2), CG (2), JH (2), DAVE
MOM: CG, JH

So here I was, a little bit high, a little bit out of breath, a little bit what the fuck do we do now? Cocky, in going for a run up the middle, got his fucked foot stomped on. He was straight off with a, ‘Sorry Nannas, I am out.’

At the time, I thought was a fucking soft cock (after the game it did look pretty bad) and started doing permutations in my head: our four players, they had six; there were still thirty-odd minutes on the clock; they were one goal up; Ghee and I were super high; Dave and Gilla are good but not that good.

The opposition weren’t great. Sure, they had some nice foot skills and they were up for it: being more pushy and aggressive than America in the eighties. Yet, they had a bad habit of shooting from range, instead of taking us on or passing through us. They shot and they shot and they shot some more, but it was all from outside our defensive ring, and Gilla swallowed them up every time. And their one big failing was their keeper, because in that first half we kept scoring against him. Gilla forced a couple of long ones, I got one on the turn, and Ghee tapped home from close range from a side kick in. These last two goals were things of beauty, even if I do say so myself. We went 4-1 up early in the first half.

I think they go one back before half time (my recollection is fuzzy on this, it could have been two). I do remember Gilla on the ground entangled with one of the opposition fighting over the ball in the goal mouth. I thought Gilla had won the fight but in the end he lost and the ref (who, in my opinion at least, was favouring the other side) gave the goal, when it really should have been a foul.

Anyway, we stepped on court for the second half to Ghee saying something like, ‘if we win this we will be heroes.’ He meant it as a pep talk but Dave and I promptly told him to shut up (sorry Gheezer).

The second half was different to the first in that we didn’t get as much ball and the novelty of playing four on five had worn off. What’s more, we were starting to tire, and Gilla was throwing more and more of the ball away. He did tell us at half time that our only hope was to hit them with the sucker punch. I couldn’t quite work out if he was defending his long ball tactics, or if he was forewarning us of what he was going to do in the second half but it mattered little: I was too addled to argue.

For most of that half, we defended, defended, and then defended some more. It was working pretty well. We weren’t marking up but more marking the space, putting our number of three between them and goal. They did get through us a couple of times and I mis-kicked a corner that went straight to one of them, who only had Gilla to beat, but for the most part we frustrated them. It went to 6-4.

And then, just as it looked like we were go to go down, Gilla’s long throw strategy gave birth to a goal, and I forced another from their culpable keeper from a side kick in. He really was shit. So here we were, five minutes to go at 6-6. We were feeling pretty confident: our defence was working, another goal was on the cards, and if we won this thing or least drew it, which looked likely, we truly would be heroes.

Then with thirty seconds they got a corner. They passed to the little guy with the moves. He got through Dave and Ghee. I confronted him, and he went to my left but I couldn’t get close enough to him. He shot. Gilla got his hands to it but couldn’t turn it aside. The final whistle blew. 7-6.

After, on the car ride back to dinner, we discussed the crumbling of the Nannas, how long we would last (about a month most said) and what happened to the commitment to the Brown cause. It was widely agreed that the Nannas were now something we did only if we didn’t have anything else on. And then Cocky cried, and we all cried with him.