Attendees: DC 1, JH 1 pen. (MOM), RH, TK, TW

Result: Nannas 2 plays Cussi Buttaes 10

Preamble
Five brave little Nannas showed up on this evening: one was feeling particularly pleased with himself; another was very poorly; two others seemed stuck on the status quo of talking tech; and the last, well, he still has balls of steel.

First half
A couple of their team were late, and the Nannas were feeling pretty good about themselves. This team is young, fast and skilful but we were holding them. In fact, we were doing much better than that; we had the better of the early exchanges and should have been ahead were it not for the two very soft goals we gifted them (by which I mean, one of the Nannas went and placed the ball in front of the opposition who was standing in a one-on-one situation with our keeper).
Cocky scored probably the solo goal of the season. He had three to beat: he went passed one, then another, and then a third, who was initially marking me but then had to deal with the Cock-threat. But Cocky was not to be denied, penetrating their goals with a strike of pure precision.
Yes, their goalie was again proving hard to beat (which makes Cock-wad’s goal just that much the better). As the Captain pointed out after the game, their shot stopper has a way of closing you down, making you try for something special to beat him. However, he did make one mistake by stepping outside his area to field a ball, which gave us spot kick. I duly buried it (even though I totally mis-kicked it).

Second half
So by this time, the opposition had their full complement, at least nine, one of whom was extremely gifted and extremely fast. I took to giving him at least a couple of metres space, which worked for a while until he started to find his range with his passing. It was about this time that the Nannas started to run out of legs. Of course, we did give them another one or two soft goals but they were just younger, faster and had a lot more subs, so a lot more fresh too (it should be mentioned here that Tao was playing on about half a body, due to illness in his family).
We toiled hard but couldn’t hold them and they scored about five or six goals in succession in as many minutes.

Special mentions
Kondo: a lot of great saves and fine distribution. Massive balls of steel.
Cocky: solo goal of the season (see above) and some fine defensive work.
Captain: stepped up with true leadership and some fine control in mid-field.
Tao: great stamina and endurance given his health and mostly encouraged the Nannas, which was a welcome change.
Jimbob: a great penalty, even if my foot wasn’t really sure where it was kicking the ball.

The cook
The cook is back. On this evening we went for impromptu Laksa and discussed the relative merits of sex with new people after being in a long-term relationship. I think the Captain and Cocky were a bit scared but Gilla would have loved it.