A Lake Of Wine

Sunday nights are never any good. They're incredibly dull, empty and slow and with only The Wall for company, I knew it was going to be long night.

And it's not as if I got much sleep either. This morning's football, in which you will get a full and intriguing report on in a moment, (if you're interested?), hampers my sleep a lot so I only got a few hours before I had to haul myself out of bed at the 16th time of asking and drive off to the slowest 8 hours of all eternity.

It didn't really turn out that way though... I was way ahead of schedule when it came to 11pm, which means locking the alcohol away to stop binge drinking, apparently. For some ridiculous reason that I can't fathom, I have a strange routine as to how I do this. I close the beer first, then close the spirits, cover the lager with some stupid black cover thing and then wheel in the cases of wine. All was going well, until the wheeling..

I was by the door into the stock room. I typed in the code, and wheeled them inside but unfortunately for me wheeled it a bit too... vigorously. In what felt like slow-motion, I felt the whole thing fall over and heard the 'SMASH' of numerous bottles collide with the very hard floor. Oh god no... 20+ bottles of wine had smashed everywhere and within seconds, the warehouse had turned into a lake of wine with bits of floating glass on top. I had no choice but to tell The Wall what had happened, and as he mocked in his stupid childish ways, I spent the best part of 90 minutes cleaning and mopping it up. By the end of that 90 minutes, in which the floor was noticeably cleaner, I had probably become drunk off the fumes. The smell was incredible, and seeing as I detested the smell of wine before this incident, it didn't help I had to mop up 20 litres of the stuff.

It was horrible, and what's more, it put me desperately behind schedule. I even worked through my break to try and make up time. Luckily for me, it was Legend Alex as the manager in the morning, instead of The Goddess of All Evil, and he said, in his own relaxed ways, "Accidents happen". Phew! I can't help but still feel ill though.. The best way I can describe it is having a mild hangover. Seriously, was that bad.

All this after another 90 minutes of very different activity. I admitted yesterday morning that I, once again, just wasn't up for another match of high fuelled intensity but hoped the adrenaline would kick in in time for kick off. I also remember saying I had a premonition that I was going to be awful?

Well, I am about as good as the worst psychic in the world, because, if I say so myself, I was anything but! Match report time. Finish reading here if you're not bothered! (Bye to all the boring ones!)

The pitch we were playing on was incredibly wet and had a wicked slope from right to left, and amazingly changed from left to right as we swapped halves! We were playing a team fighting in the top 3 with us, so we knew it was going to be a challenge. The game started off fairly scrappy, with neither team getting a foothold of the game. About 20 minutes in however, their striker latched on to the end of a through ball and calmly slotted past me into the bottom corner. 1-0 down, but a long way to go. They then had a penalty shout turned down, (rather unluckily I thought!), before we went up the other end and got a penalty of our own. The complaints from the other team were... audible... but it didn't put our centre forward off who nonchalently powered the ball home from 12 yards to make it 1-1 going into the interval.

Assistant Manager Hughie, (remember, Father Mitten is on crutches and can hardly walk), gave an all-inspiring team talk and we came out fighting in the second half. We took the lead on the hour mark, when the opposition goalkeeper did his best impression of Massimo Taibi, (YouTube it), and we were deservedly ahead, and our striker, Andy, had 2 goals. We defended stoutly, and I made a couple of smart saves to my left from shots on the edge of the area, before our right back conceded a needless penalty.

Now. There is a back story to this. I have a history of saving penalties against this side. Last year, I saved three in the league games then went on to save 3 more in the cup semi-final. I was the hero then, and I'm happy to say, the trend kept it's course as I saved this one! The same striker who had scored in the first half, smashed it fairly hard to the right hand side and I managed to palm it wide with a strong right hand. I was slapped on the back by delighted team mates and our lead was held. I have now saved 6 of the last 7 penalties I have faced from that opposition. What a stat that is!

A few minutes later, we extended our lead thanks to an absolute crackerjack from our left-mid, Curtis. We lost concentration however, and they managed to grab a goal back, albeit a little fortuitously. A shot from 10 yards out, in which I could only tip on to the post, but the spin on the ball allowed it to zip across the line, hit the other post, and dribble in. 3-2.

They pushed forward, I made a couple more good saves, including a tip round the post from a thunderbolt about 25 yards out, and then we counter attacked and allowed Andy to complete his hat-trick with a confident finish from 6 yards. It finished 4-2 and a huge away win for us, seeing as our other top 3 rival also lost. A good day for MAFC, and in particular, a good morning's work for me!

Shame about the night's work though..

Cya x