Team – Brown, Gallagher, Knott, McGonigle, Macdonald, Talib, Wright, Riley, Dossing, Boyadjiev, FFinch. Sub – Fourestier

Heavy rain was forecast in the couple of days before this game and the downpour had started in the morning so ABSSA would take the common sense decision to postpone the game and save the pitches from the inevitable damage, right? Wrong. No remise generale message was forthcoming so we trudged down to Rosieres to contemplate a bit of old style football in the mud.

Chris F had already sent out a distress call for a goalkeeper, which had apparently been answered by Dave Leigh. However, he had advised that he "might be 15 minutes late”. As the clock ticked down towards 2pm with no Dave in sight, a decision had to be made re the keeper and Pete Brown kindly stepped into the breach.

At kick off the pitch was in surprisingly good state, especially on the wings, with mud only evident in the six yard box. It took both sides a bit of time to get going but Elan were a bit quicker to adapt to the conditions than us and consequently had more possession and put us under a bit of pressure. We handled that reasonably well and then made a few forays into their half and created a couple of opportunities of our own. However, we didn’t put their keeper under enough pressure in that phase. Elan then forced a couple of corners and from one of these we failed to clear the ball decisively. Their player shot through a crowded penalty box and it took a deflection and flew past Pete, 0-1. We started to use the wings a bit more and saw some success but we reached half time still 1-0 down.

With Dave Leigh clearly AWOL, Pete handed over the bright yellow keepers jersey to Hughie for the second half and he switched to left midfield to replace Ady. Luc Forestier came on to bolster the midfield as we moved to a 3-5-2 formation. This change saw us achieve more possession and we spent a lot more time in their half. We created particularly from the left flank, with George and Luc prominent, and from one move the ball was fed to Timme outside the box and he sent a great shot into the top right hand corner of their net, 1-1.

This equaliser did have a galvanising effect on Elan and they put us under a bit of pressure towards the end of the game with most of the play coming down their left wing. Sean, Alex and Scott in the 3 man defence repelled most of what they could throw at us and protected Hughie from being tested too much. Hughie caused a bit of excitement by rolling the ball on the ground from his hands and then picking it up and it was surprising that the referee did not award an indirect free kick for this as Elan encouraged him to do. Hughie professed to being unaware of this rule change which took place somewhere in the 1980s!

We still had time to win the game and a good break on our right wing saw Chris Ffinch roll the ball into Chris Riley on the edge of the box. Timme was nicely placed to his left but memories of his winning goal against the same opposition at the same end last season were too strong and Chris went for goal. The ball shot up and into the roof of the net…… the 20 metre high netting behind the goal to stop the ball flying into the wood.

There was just time for a bit of panic stations in our defence in the last minute when their player attempt to curl one into the top corner of Hughie’s net. Hughie leapt across and palmed it away to his left. Their forward tried to force the ball home from a tight angle, a great scramble ensued, Hughie had the ball, lost it, Scott and Sean attempted to hook the ball out of the mud and after a bit more scrambling Hughie finally had the ball in his arms. Full time was immediately blown and we came away with a creditable point after all this fun in the mud. Hughie’s glasses were a bit mud splattered at the end and somewhat steamed up but otherwise intact.

There was only going to be one MOM winner after his goalkeeping heroics and it was Hughie by a convincing margin.

Full time 1-1.