13. WHEN SATURDAY’S GONE By Jonaldo

Dealing With Egos Worth £12M +

As our defender Southey once wryly observed while we were engaged in a post match pint, if all the assets of the players were added up we would have about 12 million quids plus worth on the pitch on a Friday at any one time. If we were based in London I dare say it would be easily double that. Thus, as the organiser, and player, I am dealing with egos that know they have some clout. Such was my experience this week when selecting the sides.

We have a new keeper who joined us, Ian, brother of Yorkshireman Craig. He has played on tour so his reputation as a fine and fearless shotstopper went before him. Thus when I selected him to be on my side on What’s App the night before I received some friendly verbals most notably from Phil Dallas, accusing me of picking the easier goalkeeper to pit myself against as a striker.

I disagreed and stated that I had picked a stronger, more substantial too numerically defence in front of Ron the Cat. But the general consensus seemed to be that my team of White Shirts would massacre Phil’s Dark Shirts.

It actually finished two nil to the Dark Shirts! With Ron the Cat obviously keeping a clean sheet and making one superb save to prevent us notching. I saw precious little of the ball in a deeper lying forward position tucked in behind our Spanish striker Juan, playing his first game for about a year.

I purposely used the word ‘clout’ when referring to the egos of players earlier, for Phil Dallas spent much of the match deliberately bashing into me when the referee wasn’t looking. A fair few times I referee and play but Martyn was the official this day and did a fine job, except he cannot have eyes in the back of his head. I received several clouts in the back from Phil, each time accompanied by rhetoric to the effect that I was so clumsy and had banged into him. Odd that when I am the ref and simultaneously playing that rarely seems to happen, though.

In the last few minutes with us two down I decided to return the favour and started bashing deliberately into Phil off the ball and out of sight of the ref. He yelled out to the official each time but to no effect. Then with Nigel about to shoot from outside the box for us I gave Phil a powerful shoulder charge unseen by Martyn with the whistle to free myself up from my marker to size onto any rebound, and also to give him a further repayment on what he was owed. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when Phil found himself in the optimum position to get a bit of his head on Nigel’s goalbound shot to deflect it narrowly wide.

Afterwards during the post match pint, Phil was receiving a lot of plaudits for his saving header. My part in positioning him there in the right spot to make it wasn’t mentioned. It was a salutary lesson for me and highlighted that cheats do prosper as it was only because of his original transgressions that I had resorted to such questionable play.

A further thing that emerged from the gathering at the pub was the amount of players who professed having to get up several times in the night to pass water. Southey said that his wife was making him eat pomegranates every day as this helped reduce that necessity and he claimed to have found it beneficial. I must admit, due to having been starved of the ball, I wasn’t in the best of moods and thought to myself that had some of the players been as proficient at passing as they appeared to be at pissing then I might well have got myself on the scoresheet.