Inspirational keeper ensures Allstars storm past Camden Mixer- an epic tale of a battle against the elements and the demons that haunt us
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Skies so swollen they resembled Lozza’s Sambuca-ravaged eyes after a quiet night-in, formed the backdrop to a drizzly, squall of a match in which Good Mixer’s pre-match pretensions to being on a par with Gower dissolved quickly into a puddle of embarrassment. Gower’s dominance failed initially to translate into pearls but their inspirational keeper, steering his side between the Scylla of ambition and the Charybdis of complacency, urged his Gower men not simply to lay siege to but ultimately sack the Mixer ramparts.
From a goalkeeping perspective (and by Zeus that’s what you are getting this week), the match was one of two distinct halves (I’ve always wanted to say that). The first was a lonely one for our goliath goalie, marooned in a vast and swelling lake between the posts. For 45 grey and featureless minutes Gower’s goal was threatened but once – and only then by a benign back-header from the robust and ever-reliable Jamie. But the moment proved pivotal. Needless to say our brave hero in goal, surprised and thrilled to be within sight, let alone touching distance, of the ball after 30 minutes of talking to himself and a stranded sea-gull, claimed the back-pass gratefully and powerfully (some might argue needlessly powerfully) with the zeal and gusto of a bison unleashed on a lush, open prairie. It was a marvellous two-handed take, executed to perfection as if preventing a lethal assault on goal, and accompanied by the blood-curdling cry of keepaaahhhh! for which he is renowned, feared and occasionally cautioned (as against Red Star last season). Immediately the match turned in Gower’s favour. The battle-cry gave huge and much-needed cheer to his Gower comrades who, whilst rampant - aided by a Force 8 gale blowing down on the Mixer goal and an opposition defence more porous than Glyn’s sweat glands - were persistently and infuriatingly failing to find the net... thwarted time and time again by the tediously successful antics of the Mixer keeper who managed somehow to throw himself between ball and goal on every occasion (goalkeepers love tediously successful antics).
But barely had the successful back-pass-stopping bison’s braying echoed across the rain-drenched Royal Parks, than the suddenly effervescent Kelly pounced on a routine Mix(er)-up from a corner and slotted home. Still buoyed by his keeper’s pulsating example, the good-natured groundsman and expert net-folder almost immediately latched onto a Botterill cross, made possible by a raking cross-field pass by the grand master, Russeldhino, himself, and - wait for it - rifled home. That’s three time-honoured (no, four) hackneyed phrases already and it’s not even half-time yet.
Meanwhile, back behind the 18-yard line, remote and detached from the banality of simply scoring goals, the bison was ruminating on the unforgiving nature of mankind, the inefficiency of the Royal Parks accounts department (who had mislaid and only recently discovered a Gower pitch reservation cheque issued weeks ago), premonitions of death (to which all keepers are prone during especially slack phases of the game) and the continued parlous finishing of his team-mates. An uneasy feeling was beginning to take hold. Given that it was only 2-0 as we approached half–time; with the prospect of playing uphill and into the wind in the second half; and with only one touch of the ball (however magnificent) by way of involvement so far, it was impossible to suppress troubling and all-too-vivid flashbacks to last season’s calamitous 2nd half flapping in the wind that saw the mighty bison reduced to a trembling calf as he gifted a brace of goals in the space of 5 excruciating minutes to two incredulous, yet grateful Music Choice strikers. (And, boy, has he since paid for it!)
As our hero took up his station in an even deeper puddle for the start of the second half, this feeling of unease began to loom larger. When a seagull tried and failed to make any progress into the wind and was left straining and stranded mid-air at head height above the 6-yard box, the shadow of an improbable Mixer comeback could be discerned lurking in the mists. When the mists finally did part as play resumed for the second half, the shadow turned out to be a new Mixer striker of such prodigious size and might he could have been the Apocalypse itself.
Though Gower were eating Mixer up in mid-field with the wild Poseidon-like Ricky Warren (still to pay his subs) in devastating form; and containing them in defence with typically assured performances from Ollie “look-I’m-brilliant-in-the-back-4-but-don’t-tell-anyone-because-they-might-keep-me- there” Durrant (ditto) and Phil “man-of-the-match-last-week” Glyn (subs paid), Mixer were nevertheless getting increasingly into attacking positions. Jamie was rock-like despite incurring a hobbling dead leg; Capone (safe in the knowledge he has paid his subs) robbed the opposition with the tackling of a vigilante; Chittenden (paid by cheque) was clearly inebriated but somehow still impregnable. Yet a clever reverse shot by a devilish Mixer forward speaking in tongues broke the Mixer shooting duck. And then it happened. The ghost of Music Choice reared its dreadful, drooling head in the form of Mixer’s new forward who gathered the ball outside the area with all the menace of the Cyclops himself and unleashed a shot of such power and malevolence that it seemed driven by death’s own horsemen. 2-1?! Our hero could hear his teammates already despairing. The ball accelerated towards the goal in a frightening parabola that seemed certain to rip the carefully pegged net off its stanchions, but somehow the bison was equal to the challenge and rose in slow-motion like a hump-backed whale, flipping the ball onto the bar before plunging back into the froth below. But lo, the waves came back at him still. Our hero had to launch himself first to the right for a one-handed save of biblical extent to deny another Mixer incursion and twice more had to thrust his gargantuan frame before the on-rushing ball to quell what Mixer could muster.
But by now the storm was broken. Mixer had nothing more to offer and even the drizzle faded into a mid-autumnal shroud as the ghosts of games past beat their retreat. Dominant and imperious throughout, with neat one-twos and thoughtful passing, Gower should have had a proverbial hatful. But inspired again by their keeper’s Odysseus-like feats, they now pushed on to victory. The ever-threatening Medley (first to pay his subs as usual), fed by the versatile and skilful Botterill (subs unpaid) saw another shot parried by the Mixer keeper but made sure with the rebound, turning to greet his admirers like a Greek warrior from the Trojan fields. Then Russeldhino (retired), surely more than mere mortal, stepped onto the Elysian stage, rose up behind yet another clever ball from Botterill to strike the top corner with sublime sweetness and power as if the clouds had parted to reveal Phoenician riches of pearl, coral and ebony. More slick touches by Botterill set up Kelly (good with nets but not with subs) for a shot that lifted over the keeper but skewed tantalisingly wide in the wind. When Chittenden directed a header perfectly into the left hand corner, we thought it was all over. Then Warren, the colossus, took the legs from under a Mixer player who angrily announced he had to go to work on Monday...and it suddenly was (over that is).
MOM – Klinger for a performance, whilst perhaps not fleet of foot, then of exquisite control, deft touch and Olympian authority
