Old Blues IIIs 2 – 3 OTFC IIIs

For those of you keeping up with Old Tiffs 3s season you’ll know that last weeks’ game against Actonians ended with a travesty against football justice.  This week, in a clash between the league’s two strongest teams (you’ve got to be strong when propping up the rest of the table, right?) Tiffs were determined to change their luck and get a valuable 3 points.

On Thursday morning skipper Conrad Bell was in the familiar position of having only 8 players available, so he sent up his prayers to the footballing Gods and waited for divine intervention.  The football God of availability duly stepped up.  Forrest returned from a 9 year Tiffs sabbatical with the magic words of “I’m down the pub and my mate fancies a game, too”.  Owen Kirk chose Tiffs over decorating a bathroom, and with the Mrs away, who would know?  Henry Hatch was back from a hamstring injury. TWC had finally finished the longest exam in history.  Tim saw that the ground was only 10 minutes from his house (sorry Kimber), much easier than a trip to Carshalton and a couple of vets were going spare.  In the space of 24 hours a brave sixteen (16) players were available, forcing a double checking of the league rules on how many subs are allowed.

Pre match preparations saw Tiffs players old and new trying to learn each other’s names and a perfunctory warmup while the skipper spent forever submitting a team sheet to the ref.

The game itself was a close affair.  Tiffs started well and had the better of the possession but were unable to make any real chances.  Aware that the pitch was pretty big, and our defence notoriously old and a little slow, Tiffs were sitting a little too deep and gradually Old Blues started to make some chances.  A flurry of crosses and set pieces were mostly being dealt with, but a defensive error and failed clearance allowed Old Blues to scramble a goal.  Tiffs were undaunted and quickly got themselves back into the game.  A through ball from Alex Belemet was raced onto by Oli Lofthouse who rounded the keeper and fired home from a very tight angle to make it 1-1.  Sensing that the momentum was shifting, Tiffs continued to press forward and quickly found themselves 2-1 up after Oli Lofthouse hounded the Old Blues keeper into making a mistake and tapping into an empty net.

The halftime team talk focused on going out there and putting the game to bed.  There’s more goals out there, if we keep working hard and playing the same way, we should be able to stretch our lead.  Of course, none of this happened, as team talks are designed to be ignored.

Tiffs struggled to control the game in the second half and the game descended into Old Blues dominating possession but failing to really create any chances, while Tiffs looked to counter and finish off the game.

Entering the last 15 minutes, Tiffs were still clinging on to their slender lead when disaster struck.  A missed clearance allowed Old Blues to get in behind and fire themselves level at 2-2.  After Tiffs had spent most of the half on the back foot it looked like there would be only one winner, but the football Gods had smiled on us once this weekend, and they clearly had their favourites.  With a few minutes to go, Oli Lofthouse broke down the right hand side and whipped in a cross for Henry Hatch to head home unmarked at the back post.  Tiffs chose the low road and timewasted the remaining few minutes and sealed a hard fought 3-2 win.

Probably the first, and last, time that OTFC 3s will field 16 players, so it was only fair that we took home the 3 points on such a special occasion.

POTM: Owen Kirk*

*Oli voted for himself, so was rightly disqualified from the POTM award that he would otherwise have comfortably won.