London League VII Fixture Chat

Scores as follow

G1: MJ 5 - 1 Westway

Shane 1, Miles 1, Greg 3 - Vit 1

G2: MJ 5 - 3 Westway

Shane 3, Miles 1, Greg 1 - Vit 2, Kev 1

G3: MJ 6 - 2 Westway

Shane 1, Miles 2, Greg 3 - Kev 2

I'll do a bit of a write up for both games this weekend.

It started on a beautifully rainy day in Herne Hill for the highly anticipated fixture of Much Jokes vs Clerks but despite the court becoming heavily saturated by the morning downpours the sun poked its head through the clouds and both teams were, as they say in 'Merica, pumped. It started as most expected, with neither team able to get their heads in front but that would soon change as Clerks tactic of sitting deep and attacking Jokes on the counter paid off when Felix broke the deadlock. The game continued in this fashion with Joke playing extremely high, leaving themselves open to Felix's counter attacks but the most impressive goal of the first game came from Greg who, in acres of space managed to hit the ball into his own wheel and into is own net, an own goal which most would agree was highly comical in nature. The second game was much tighter with Jokes playing a much more defensive game, I'm fairly certain nothing truly memorable happened in this game as both teams were playing fairly safe to avoid a loss but it was Jokes who ended up coming out on top by a very fine margin. After this game we were banished from own beloved Herne Hill court and had to migrate to Newington, By this time, the usually timid British sunshine was uncomfortably warm and it seemed that everyone was fairly reluctant to play the final game. That being said, it was a high intensity final game with the famous Newington bobble proving to be quite a dick in the ear. This was probably the least competitive of the three games with Clerks struggling to cope with Jokes' speed and ability to cope with the bobble and despite a fairly close scoreline they came out comfortable winners. All in all there were some very good periods of play from both teams and you could certainly see why both were competing for the title.

Westway vs Much Jokes

A solid turn out for this fixture with a lot of people having money and drugs riding on it. It's safe to say that everyone expected a difficult day for the refs with both teams spending quite a lot of time behind their keyboards in recent weeks, though Louis didn't help his cause by mistaking Westway for Clerks before the game had even started. Joke started in typical Jokes fashion, flying around the court like a rabbit on heat and it wasn't long before the refs had some tough decisions to make, Mr. Consistency (Miles) kicking off proceedings with a nice bit of mallet hacking. Vit opened the scoring with a very neat bit of play but this would only prove to be a consolation goal as Jokes clicked into gear and started playing some impressive polo winning the game by a four goal margin - their speed and physicality proving to be too much. The second game was a corker, both teams by now were well into their stride and playing at a speed which collectively made the crowds bumhole squeak on several occasions. Vit, known for his speed, was taking a direct line to goal until Shane legitimately cut off that line causing Vit to bail – almost pulling off an incredible 180 endo to stay on. Greg only had one enemy in this game and that was the opposing goal which multiple times he inadvertently ploughed into. The game was much more closely contested with Joke unable to maintain a comfortable lead until Phil busted out the heckle of the day shouting "hey Miles, trees are shit" – unfortunately for Phil this made Shane angry, because he could see his teammate was physically upset, and replied with three goals. The game ended 5-3 which made the final game the league decider. Felix wasn't at the game but his presence was felt with Jimmy relaying his messages to Westway, most of which were along the lines of "hey Westway, Felix says play better". Westway and Kev in particular responded with an early goal, holding on to that advantage for at least two thirds of the game but after a bit of a goal mouth scramble the ball was tapped in for a Jokes equaliser. This put the pressure on Westway, which was personified by Phil's heavy fall whilst trying to prevent Greg from scoring, handing Joke the lead with 4 minutes remaining. After such a good start to the third game, Westway unfortunately let their game slip allowing Greg to score his second hat-trick of the day and Miles, ruining his consistent streak of scoring one goal a game, planted two in the back of the Westway net. MJ came out on top in all three games crowning them champs of league two.

Congrats to Danielle, Miles and Shane who were the original three but also Greg who played an important role helping to secure the title in Danielle's absence.