Fortune favours the bold

Saturday 21 August 2010

The druids over the hill (and far away) had been working overtime perfecting the steps to their rain-dance, and it looked like they had finally got it right, as the channel was blessed with tank-filling, garden-watering rainfall. A slight misstep in the Druidic choreography however made it seem like the rain might not stop in time for Saturday's games. The soaking made Woodbridge Oval a more appropriate venue for a performance of Swan Lake than football, forcing the cancellation of Junior games and the migration of the Under 16 game to a slightly-less-aquatic Kettering Oval.

Spirits were high within the Woodbridge under 16 team as they rowed to Kettering, the team's shaman had studied the portents, and declared that the birth of a Southern Right whale in the channel earlier in the week was a 'well-wickid' omen. Even so, circumstances forced the team to adopt a complex numerological strategy designed to make the most of a weird Saturn/Pluto astrological event in order to counteract the fact that they only had ten players for the game.

The upshot was a pretty interesting and competitive match-up with both teams playing an impressive, and in the first half, rather defensive game. Clarence's disciplined back line was doing a great job of stymieing the Woodbridge attack, and their Keeper – who from a distance looked a lot like Germany's Manuel Neuer – made it clear that he was not going to concede goals easily.

The more fluid Woodbridge defending was also on fire, cutting short Clarence forays into the Woodbridge half. Jack was making some crucial clearances and winning important aerial balls, Vincent was magically appearing from thin air to thwart any danger in front of goals, Sindri had his mojo on again repeatedly stealing the ball from opposition players. Plus Deans, Kye and Rainen were blasting about making nuisances of themselves around the middle of the park.

Solid defending meant that the game remained at nil all for some time, but eventually Jy opened the scoring with a magical ball that finally bypassed the German keeper. Clarence's response was quick in coming; and it was a pretty cool bit of hoodoo too, a high ball from way back that caught Aiden off-guard and resulted in a goal that will no doubt be talked about for years to come in the Clarence camp. As the whistle blew for half time the score stood at a very respectable one all; the defenders and goalkeepers on both teams could be proud of their performances.

Woodbridge consulted the oracle at half time, keen to find an answer to the stalemate. Nike, the goddess of Victory, who just happened to be tootling past on her little red Vesper, stopped long enough to mention that she had particularly enjoyed their gun-slinging performance against Nelson/MacKillop a few weeks previously; and suggested they might try a similar strategy here. Unfortunately none of the team speak or understand Greek so the Goddess's sage advice fell of deaf ears.

Luckily the team seemed to have reached a similar conclusion anyway, they had studied the Feng Shui and seen where the chi was being blocked by the poor placement of a vase of flowers. A slight rearrangement of the furniture was all that was required to get the energy flowing again. Subsequently the second half was characterised by much more attacking play, and a further seven goals were scored – that's an average of one goal every 5.71 minutes – exciting stuff! Woodbridge boots were behind 5 of those 7 goals. Jy charmed the ball into the opposition's net one more time; Bolan abracadabra'd a couple in and Phineas waved his magic wand and added his name to the sheet twice too. Clarence also managed to get a couple more goals, so the end result was Woodbridge 6 – Clarence 3.

All in all it was another fantastic effort from the team, one that cements them firmly the top of the division 2 ladder.

In a parallel universe, where everything happened a mere fraction of a centimetre to the left, Rainen's magnificent performance had netted him a hat-trick. In our slightly right-of-centre world however, his shots glanced off the post or were collected by the keeper and the hattrick just failed to materialise.

Alio