Men's 1st vs Urmston Men's 1s

Urmston can usually be found locked in battle with Grimsby for the crown of ‘Britain’s Most Depressing Town Name’, but on Saturday 10th October their opponents were none other than the mighty Chester Men’s 1st XI, bringing with them a formidable 100% win record for the season.

During the warm up, we discovered that the pitch was as slippery as Byrdy’s greased up hair, posing a threat to Chester’s sharp pass and move game plan. Luckily for Ed, frogs have evolved sticky pads to excel in such conditions, unfortunately the other 15 members of the squad would undoubtedly find this challenging.

Chester struggled to get a foothold and found themselves 2-0 down early on. While we did grow into the game, Jim decided to choose this moment to teach his teammates a lesson. For years, Jim has been flashing (actually pretty good) deliveries across the face of the goal, only to see his teammates miss the ball completely from a yard out. Spiteful Jim got revenge by letting two excellent balls go over/under/through a hole his stick from a combined distance of one foot. 1-0 Jim, still 2-0 Urmston in the actual game.

We did grab a goal back before half time after Andy Pye scored his first goal for Chester in 439 appearances. In fairness to him, he was only trying to pass to Ben Scott, but Ben just happened to behind the goal line. Dave Hughes made his contractually obliged 10 minute cameo before breaking his thumb during an overly aggressive thumbs up to Paul for some good play.

During a socially distanced half time team talk, Keith and John were upbeat and told us to keep following the processes that we know will work. Chester went out for the second half full of positivity and energy, sure that they’d be able to turn the game around.

5 minutes into the second half, Urmston made it 3-1. Stupid processes.

After this, we all told each other to do more processes and, to be fair, it did all start to fall into place. Some slick, flowing passing allowed Paul and then Byrdy to find a few yards space in the D, which they promptly stuck in Urmston’s funny shaped goal to get us back level. Alex Mosquera then held off men 4 times his bodyweight to win a short corner. The call came from the sidelines to give it Ben Scott on the right castle, but everyone knew deep down it would end up being a Chester Special. The ball came out to left castle, Brydy slapped it gently towards the keeper who kindly passed it back to him. On his second attempt, Byrdy had an actual shot and it found the net, 4-3.

Byrdy then won a flick and then (on a hattrick) ran a mile due to his very serious penaltystrokeaphobia condition. Jim stepped up to redeem himself and slotted it in to put Chester 5-3 up with 5 minutes to go. Byrdy went about his defensive duties with the grace of a dyspraxic axe murderer to give away a short corner that Urmston scored from, leaving Chester with a squeaky last few minutes to see out at 5-4 up.

The final whistle went, everyone did an awkward mixture of fist bumps, elbow taps, stick bats before a hasty exit, hoping it would be a good while before we have to return. Not a classic, but an important win to get under our belts, always nice to start the week top of the league.

MOM: Byrdy. Good play in general + goals = votes.

DOD: Ben Maudsley. Is so extra that he refers to all inanimate objects by their brand name. 10 points to anyone who knows what a Nalgene is.

Joke of the Week, from Adam Cliffe (aged 25 and three-quarters):

I was in the shop and a man came up to me asking for some help.

“Do you know where I can find a bookmark?” he said.

I replied to him, “I think they’re over there, but don’t call me Mark, my name’s Adam.”