Nannas 2 plays Unathletico Madrid 1
Attendees: Caesar, Dave, Gilla, Guido, Jim, Jerry (team MOM)

I am not quite sure what it is about this team that fires up the Nannas. Maybe it’s the little Asian dude, who’s forever grabbing at you, pushing you and purposely getting all up in your shit, but the moment you do it back to him, he gets more indignant than Donald Trump at a press conference. Then there’s their keeper and his on-field bunkum. This pecker puller, who can’t help himself but remark on nearly every play of the game, was the same guy that when we played them ages ago threw the ball away from Chassy when they were five or six goals up with a about thirty seconds on the clock. Or is it the guy with the angry eyes. Mr A-Eyes, after I had inadvertently kicked into him and then tried to apologise, went into this transfixed, primeval state with his mate all like ‘ooooh, don’t touch him, ooooooooooh don’t even go near him’ like he was so close to the edge that one more little push was going to see him inflict some sort of berserker rage.

Sure, in the first half, I got into them worse than a bad case of the Clap but it wasn’t like they were blameless in all this, and it wasn’t like we weren’t in a competitive environment where getting your opponent worked up is a good way to put them off their game (these are the same guys we beat in the semi last season).

You will be pleased to know that I did resolve to settle it down a bit after a couple of words from Dave at half time. The only problem was Caesar didn’t get this same advice, or if he did he didn’t heed it. He and Mr A-Eyes had a bit of a set too in the second half, which almost came to blows.

You will also be happy to hear that we were playing some good football. We were holding the ball and passing the ball, Caesar kept running through them, and Dave and I were cleaning up at the back. The first half ended at a goal apiece, and in the second, Caesar got another early on.
As the clock wound down they came at us again and again. They are fast and young, and in those last ten minutes it seemed like we must concede.
Yet they were also way angry and sulky. And like a spoilt child that always gets its way, they expected that the goals would come (but sometimes, like on this evening, this can work against you).

Gilla did pull off some amazing saves (as he always does) but the real turning point was when Jerry arrived with about eight minutes to go (just when some of the older Nannas were starting to tire). It was like the Calvary appearing out of the last afternoon mist after much blood shed and sure enough it tipped the battle in our favour.

As you probably have guessed, we held on.

Afterwards, most of them didn’t shake our hands and they were mutterings like, ‘let’s take it to the carpark’, but all they did out there was cry to the ref and Joel about how dirty we were and how the officiating should have done much, much more to stop this.

What a bunch of babies.