Attendees: CG, JH (MOM), TK, TW,

Result: Nannas 4 plays Dynamo Tehran 6

Will the Nannas ever learn?
A great sports coach once said that you cannot play without the ball. In almost fourteen years of play, the Nannas still haven’t heard this, understood it or brought this basic of soccer into their game. It’s simple: if you keep giving the ball to the opposition, and you do not have it yourself, you can never be competitive.
Thursday night was another classic example. Whether it was our goalie constantly kicking it away, or one of our mid-fielders passing it to no one, again and again we gave the ball on a silver platter to the opposition and invited them with open arms to come at us, which they gleefully did.
On the face of it, the score line for tonight’s game does suggest that the Nannas were in the match but you would be wrong: we never had the ball; they were always in control. It was theirs to lose, never ours to win.

Where is the run going to come from?
There are one or two brown men (okay, most of us) that can hardly muster a trot these days let alone run at top pace, or do that for a full thirty-six minutes. Yes, as much as it hurts to say, the Nannas were consistently a good metre or so behind their direct opponents for most of this evening. They just couldn’t keep up.
And when we were in attack, well, let’s just say that there wasn’t much running around opponents or making darting runs from deep on goal.
I know the Nannas have done a lot of sprint work in the off-season but it really hasn’t helped and the truth has to be faced: the Nannas are getting old and slow.

Will the core of the side ever return?
The Nannas seem like a broken up band that reform only sporadically only to go their separate ways again straight after the gig. Yes once upon a time, there was a core side of Nannas that turned out every week. They were brave and true and lived for Thursday nights.
But the years have changed us. As they have rolled by the excuses have mounted, artistic pretension and work have gotten in the way, one moved far from the city and another overseas, and others, well, their bodies just fell apart.
Do you remember the full team sub, or the sub sheet?

When does a man know to quit?
Steven Waugh was once the greatest cricketer on earth. He brought the Windies back to earth, he flogged the Poms and then flogged them again, and he just loved to grind the Kiwis into the dirt. His ability was natural, his hunger for the game unsurpassed, his fight legendary. But then one day he found that he couldn’t do it anymore. It was like the bat had somehow become different in his hands and he couldn’t wield it like he once used to: he was getting old. Bowlers that he used to flay began to get the better of him. Crowds started hoping instead of expecting. Where once he was feared, respected and hated, suddenly he had become someone to shuffle along, to let a younger, quicker man take his place. The parallels with the Nannas are eerie.
Of course, most of us don’t really want to acknowledge it and we still think we are competitive mainly because of our supremely gifted keeper (keepers can keep playing until they’re fifty, mainly because they hardly ever run), who usually keeps opposition tallies to under ten (when most of the time they should be in the teens or twenties) but we never win anymore, or if we do it’s not like we ever string two, or three together. And the finals, when was the last time we made those? Was it three years ago, or four?
It’s a hard thing when a man doesn’t know it’s time to quit. Steve Waugh knew it, but didn’t want to admit it and he spent those last few years battling demons, his body as well as the quicks that bounced balls around his forehead and an ever impatient public. I say again, the parallels with the Nannas are eerie.

Does Brown always equal futsal?
The question has been asked before and it will be asked again: for the Nannas to remain the Nannas does futsal always have to play a part? Or put another way, will the Nannas still be the Nannas if we aren’t in a structured competition and called the Nannas by another team?
And what does happen when we can’t play soccer anymore, or if only one or two us can still play? Does one, two or three really constitute a full brown team? And let’s not fool ourselves; we are not far off this now.
The Nannas (apparently) have an upper management but if they were really managers (like real managers) surely there would be a succession plan in place. The business case would have been written already: the SWOT analysis would have been done, the case for and against argued and settled, the restructure taken to HR, the stakeholders consulted, the finances found.
Maybe it’s happening already, and it’s the calm before the storm, and they are just waiting for the right time to announce. I for one hope it’s sooner rather than later. I know the impacts will be great, and the shock will be felt far and wide, but it’s long over due and Upper Management knows it, well, they should.