Frosty Start To 2017

<p>In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.&nbsp;Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. It was certainly cold, and the astro-turf under foot was crunchy with frost if not hard as iron. The difficult conditions, and general rustiness of both teams, made for an interesting topsy-turvy game, and led to some comedy slip/tumbles - mainly from Rich Zamora. We had loads of players keen to burn off some of the additional timber garnered over the Christmas break so manager Stu had a squad of 15 to pick from. The starting line-up picked itself as always, with only eleven making it onto the pitch for 7pm. They were:<p>Tyson<p>Burty (or was that Steve Weir's double?) / Stu / Hoof / Charles<p>Jnr / Toto / Zondervan / Sheedy<p>Ilyas / Zamora<p>You could tell it was chilly because Stu was wearing some of his wife's tights, Ilyas was wearing his own tights, Zamora had grown a face-warming beard, and I was wearing a gilet <b>and </b>gloves. No snoods spotted though. To be honest, there were too many goals to write up. Almost all of the oppo goals were gifts / blunders so won't be covered off in detail. Our opener was a breakaway, against the run of play, Zamora finding Ilyas who smashed low and hard through the keepers right foot. They equalised, and might have gone 2 - 1 ahead quickly after - can't remember. Phil got our second though. In one sense you could say it was a delightfully placed left-foot lob from the edge of the area. In another sense it was a miscued waft of a cross: either way it went in. The first half finished 3 - 2 with MOTM Jnr scoring an absolute beaut of a flukey cross-shot that went in a hole in the &nbsp;side netting and was given. Flukey, &nbsp;should-be-disallowed goals, are goals, you pricks.<p>The second half was more of the same with short lived leads being cancelled out quickfire equalisers. Our 4th was a really nice goal, Jacko Flasho playing it to Zondervan who controlled and then hooked a right foot volley into the top corner - always screamers and never a GAGYP with that lad. BOC felt like we'd timed it just right when Latch made it 5 - 4 with only a couple of minutes left, it wasn't to be however, as ASJS equalised with the very last kick of the game, literally.<p>Hoff Jnr a well deserved MOTM with loads of great runs, crosses, harrying and a flukey goal to boot.