CB1, DC5M, CG1, JH1, AW, Prashana
v Midweek Crisis

In The silence of The Lambs (1991), Dr. Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins, asks Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling what it is that a person first covets? They covet the thing they see every day. Now have look at your hand. How many fingers does it have? Putting aside the ableist assumption that you don’t have some kind of congenital birth defect and/or haven’t suffered a disfiguring and probably uncompensated workplace injury, then you should see five fingers. Well, five digits (is a thumb technically a finger?), anyway, there are 5, always staring back at you, creating a covetous loop, Mrs palmer and her five lovely daughters, thou shalt not covet another man’s hand and all that, just a couple of bros hanging out… the 5 senses, the 5 stages of grief, the 5 Platonic solids, the 5 kingdoms of Life, the 5 goals that rippled the back of the net. A brace is all good and well, a hat trick is very respectable, and a four goal haul is ethically and morally beyond reproach but 5, well, that is positively covetous… but enough of that already, well, perhaps a little more a little later…

As we were warming up pre-game, a young man with a very not-grey beard siddled up to Andy and rather coyly asked ‘are you guys the Nannas?’, dude, where have you been for the last 25 years! So from this we can infer that it was their first game at APISC (Local Sports, whatever), they’ll learn. They’ll also learn that running a well oiled bureaucratic machine is not a central tenet of APISC management given we kicked off 10mins late. I suspect they will also improve rather quickly in the coming games but for now they were about to be taught a harsh lesson by the Nannas. The final score was 8-4 but seriously it could have easily been 12, or more, the Nannas were totally bossing the show. 

The Midweek Crisisers did score a couple of early goals, and Giller, who was in a fiesty (slash borderline shouty) mood, was letting the Nannas know how he felt about that, amidst the usual outrageous saves and kicking of the the ball at the far wall, quite often up near the roofline. Their goalie/s also made a few really good saves but the Nannas seemed to have a lot of space and time on the ball and were passing it around fluidly. We also had a brand spanking new ring-in in the shape of Prashana, Giller’s next door neighbour and purveyor of fine bagels. He turned up even later than Joel but in much shorter shorts, or maybe just much longer legs, in any case he’d some skills about his person, a fire in his belly and great hair, so his number has definitely been added to the ring-in list. Of the remaining Nannas, Chassy was tackling and hustling and putting in a never ending succession of through balls. He did at one point pay very close attention to one of the opposition but later claimed he was, in point of fact, being reached around himself, so who knows. Wal put in a number of crucial tackles and was running the lines like a machine, there were that many one-twos at the top end of court! Wal also had a shot saved near the end of the game which was a freaking rocket, the goalie knew nothing about it but somehow flail/deflected the ball off course. Jim was largely anonymous… just kidding eh… I think we’re simply getting too used to his regular country hat tricks, but he was first to the ball every time and never lost the hunger*, including a Hinkleyesque back heel attempt on goal early in the second half. It should also be noted, in addition to the preponderance of terrible ‘passes’ finding themselves half way up the back wall. Giller also laid on some very sweet through balls “on the laces”, including an almost basketball-shot-like lobbed throw over an opposition attacker into the path of a galloping Nanna, tasteful. And that’s not to mention the goal from well behind half way, top corner, rocket, standard… Jim and Chapsby also scored but I can’t rightly recall the details, sorry chaps. The other 5 goals, though, I can remember with preternatural clarity…

TL;DR 

1. On the left foot, believe it or not, from a Jim (I think) through ball, down the left, I let it run past and then had hopeful swing with the unco foot, a shot with a cross backup plan, it flashed across the face of goal and in off the far post, sweet as.

2. The glancing header. I’ve promised myself to never do headers again, I already have enough of an ABI from the 90s, but there it was, coming in low and hard, thankfully it really was just the glance and my cognitive decline received only the slightest nudge.

3. Another through ball, this time down the right from chapsman, in that outside channel, like it’s coming ‘over the shoulder’, it’d be fascinating to get the FMRI machine on the pitch to see what exactly happens at that moment where your brain does the 180˚ flip, in any case this was a much more deliberate shot on the less unco right foot

4. An interception just over halfway and a goalie wildly out of position, they kept leaving the goals wide open, playing with keeper as a 5th man, and it sort of worked, but they were surfing close to the edge and in addition to No.4 also had a least one very near Stupa boot moment,

5. The last goal was a long ball from Giller taken down with my back to goal, but it was super late in the game, they’d stop running and I had time to turn and toe poke into the back of the net as the buzzer sounded, very ASMR, very satisfying… so mindful, so demure…

Après:

Then to the Union (chassy’s cook, unplanned, unscored), the fish burger special was sold out and Jim got too high and dropped his hamburger. There were some policy decisions made regarding the rules around vote blocking for failing to write a match report, see rule 3 clauses b-d. Giller then revealed that his progeny had recently been digging into the Nannas public archive at which point both the Christopher’s realised their reputations have been hanging in the balance for years, literally tettering on the precipice of cancellation, with the highly inappropriate yet publicly accessible Nannas blog just lying around on the internet for anyone to see like the beasteality website someone forgot to close on their office computer before the powerpoint presenatation to the leadership team. So, for the record, and before the blog is shuttered, no Nanna has taken drugs of any kind or said or done anything wrong, ever.

* Although said hunger did get a bit yelly at one point near the end and put poor chapsbenis off his shot

** Speaking of Jim, and putting people off their game, sorry for almost kicking the ball at your face Jim. It wasn’t mean to be anywhere near that close, well, it was meant to be quite close, in a friendly but sort of mean ‘taste of your own medicine’ kind of way, but it was way too close, and a little bit scary, sorry!

Timestamp: 

Arsenal beat Man U in the first game of the new season and then gazump Spurs to sign Eze. Albo continues to disappoint on almost every front. Trump issues fresh deadlines for Putin having failed to follow up on a single earlier one, TACO forever. Netanyahu is beyond fvcked.