4 December 2005 Hickey Cup Round 1 at DUNDONALD ROAD RECREATION GROUND DCFC 2 Gary, Richie Walsingham Reserves 5 by Matty Aitken

 

 

 

 

 

“THE REFEREE'S A ....... BIT OF AN IDIOT"

In this day and age it is far too easy to blame a below par performance on the referee, which is exactly why we should do it. Just as we thought we were back on track along come Walsingham Reserves from the division below us for this cup tie and derail us big-time, with a little help from the man in black of course.

The game started in fantastic fashion with Walsingham almost scoring the goal of the season with us not even touching the ball when they struck the post from long distance. We shrugged this incident off as a freak and soon went up the other end and scored with young Gary taking advantage of a good ball from Ed by beating the keeper at his near post.

It was here that things turned bad. Two corners, two goals from Walsingham reserves. Two goals that probably shouldn’t have stood what with our defence being elbowed about. No worries we thought, we’ll just go and score again, after all they’re in a division below us.

Unfortunately our opponents thought they were Arsenal circa George Graham. So did their linesman who was about as dodgy as Wimbledon market. The flag was waving even when our players were coming from our own half , even when the ball came off their own players, even when they were taking a corner (maybe not the last one).

Anyway, we had another setback when Walsingham made the game 4-1 after our defence got caught short at the back. Unfortunately the half ended on a sour note (as if it wasn’t sour enough) when their striker looked to have broken his leg after a collision with noted nutter Geoff in goal.

This resulted in a 45 minute halftime as we waited on the ambulance. Some spent this time keeping warm for the second half, some didn’t. Eventually we did kick off, this time looking much more awake than we did in the first half. Still this didn’t stop us from going 5-1 down after some more defensive hoodwinks.

Now the game turned particularly bad as the ref decided he wanted to use some of his flash new cards. It was Dan who saw both red and yellow for two tackles that were not brilliant but certainly not worth sending's off. Ed also saw the yellow for some unknown reason.

Despite having ten men we battled on and got a deserved second goal when Ritchie (or was it their players hand?) bundled the ball into the back of the net after a pretty extreme goal mouth scramble.

So the game ended 5-2 and we went off to moan about the ref. One good point was the fact that we battled on to the very last minute, even if we were 3 behind and playing with 10 men against 12.