Tom Cramer posted on April 26, 2007 15:35
Well, it started off alright. Beautiful sunny day, ‘Great day for football’ I thought, as I pottered round the house getting myself prepared for the battle ahead. Then my thoughts were interrupted when the phone rang. “Can you come down and referee the 1st half of the Over 35’s game, Tom?”. “Yeah, no problem”. I threw all my gear in the car, had a quick look to make sure nothing had been left behind, and off I went to Fortress Bledisloe. As I strode through the trees to Pitch 1, the game had already kicked off as they’d got fed up waiting for me to arrive! Which is fair enough. Stood around, enjoying the sunshine and watching the Over 35s dish out a bit of a pasting to Lee’s ITNZ team.
Then to the main event, as part of the ongoing 1st team coaching merry-go-round I was taking the reins today and really didn’t want to be the Coach who led the team to their first loss of the season. No pressure! The boys have been playing well, looked good at training the previous night, the team was picked, Sam hadn't locked his boots in the car again. Everything was set up for a good day. Then the wheels started to fall off! From having the starting eleven and 3 subs sorted out, in one fell swoop we were reduced to 12 men. This meant a bit of a rethink of the starting line-up and also sending out an SOS to the Over 35s team which John Keen answered, thankfully, and JK took a spot on the bench.
Onwards and upwards, one of the things I stressed in the dressing room before the game was that we shouldn’t give the referee any opportunity to be handing out yellow cards, so you can imagine my delight when Simmo got booked after approximately 300 seconds! I’ve done some pretty stressful things in my life but very few of them compare to having to watch 85 minutes with Simmo on a yellow card – torture. It was shortly afterwards that the remaining wheels, which had been wobbling a bit, finally gave up the ghost. Suburbs, who had the biggest striker I have ever seen (as I said to some people on the sideline, “I wouldn’t like to be stuck behind him in a buffet queue”) went 1 – 0 up and then Simon had to come off with a heel injury. This meant that we were down to one on the bench and the team were going to have to do it tough for the rest of the game. Oh dear.
Then, a red card for one of their players, on an afternoon which would produce more cards than a dealer at the Sky City Casino, proved to be a turning point. Just as my blood pressure and my cigarette consumption were rising alarmingly, the tide started to turn and we started to play the football we are capable of. The back four began to take on a more settled look, Sam, Jason, James and Dave took control in midfield and Andy and Mark were started to cause a bit of havoc for their defenders. A strange calm descended over me, despite appearances to the contrary, and despite going in 1 down at half-time I knew that if we were patient and carried on playing good football we would get a result, and so it proved.
Screamers from Chris (It was a shot, honest), Jason and Sam put the game beyond doubt and then a typical Andy Davey goal (miss the easy chance then pot the harder one) put the icing on the cake. With the points in the bag, it was time to give the crowd what they wanted, Andy (who had run himself into the ground despite starting the game with a groin injury) was replaced by JK with 5 minutes left. The roars at JK’s introduction were only increased when, for his first touch, he rose majestically above a Suburbs defender to nod the ball out wide to Dave. Marvellous.
Later in the clubrooms, once I’d finally managed to figure out how to text the result to Soccer 2, I raised the famous PTFC handle (which does actually only hold a pint, by the way!) to my lips and allowed myself a wee smile (which doesn’t happen often) at the day’s events. Beautiful day, a superb win by the team in difficult circumstances, and I only got through around 60 fags! Good fun this coaching thing, roll on Saturday.