Mountains vs BUFC F’s

After driving for what seemed like hours to the remote rural region of Mangrove Mountain, avoiding trolls under bridges and bands of roving peasants brandishing pitchforks, F-Grade prepared to take on the leaders of the table on a beautiful, soft green pitch.

Following an extensive briefing from the grizzled referee, Terrigal won the toss and elected to run westwards. The first ten minutes saw Mountains attacking aggressively, but when Tek Tea, at fullback, snatched the ball from their winger and sent it forward to Steve Head on the wing, the tables turned suddenly. A cross to the centre found Brett Fenton, who passed to Justin O’Malley Jones and with a deft flick of his right shin the ball was in the back of the net.

Mountains came back hard and pressured our goal consistently for twenty minutes, before an accidental deflection off Jason Bush’s head from a corner put the ball into our net. Terrigal replied and had several opportunities from corners but were unable to score, and with just minutes to go in the first half, Mountains scored, again from a corner.

The vocal Mountains cheer squad and numerous reserves contrasted with the two injured players and one reserve on the Terrigal sideline, and it soon became evident in the second half that Mountains had found a way through our centres. An absence of talk from Terrigal, and little evidence of the aggression and hunger for the ball of the previous Sunday, kept our forwards looking backwards for the ball. In goal, Simon Ashley-Binge had a busy afternoon, saving a good many points and retrieving the ball from the bush behind the goal numerous times, at least until a child chewing a stalk of hay wandered by and decided to act as ball boy. How this ball retrieval system will work for night games is not immediately apparent.

The game was fairly physical, with the usual string of appeals to the ref from the opposition that Terrigal has become accustomed to, and the referee’s calls of “Young man!” becoming increasingly strident as the game progressed. Twenty-five minutes in, the sixth Mountains corner kick of the half lofted in short and, moving to mark the player in front of him, Adam Chandler inadvertently deflected the ball from a header off his thigh and past the Terrigal goal defenders.

So. 3-1, two of which were, in-effect, own-goals. Despite that, Terrigal had to admit they’d been outplayed by a team who made their passes stick and kept up consistent pressure for much of the game. After the game our injured players who’d made the trek to give support disagreed, claiming that Mountains weren’t a better team, it was our own lack of will that let us down.

Back to the drawing board and every player at training this week!

Final result: 3-1 Mountains.