Showing posts with label calling the cops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label calling the cops. Show all posts

Monday, 9 October 2023

Calling the cops to ensure a safe passage home

Games 15-17, 2023-24

Let's jump to Game 17. It was already over two weeks ago, but it's taken me that long to feel like writing about it. For the first time ever, the police were called to one of my games. If we want to put a positive spin on it, I suppose that's not bad going after 15 years.

It was a one-sided boys' U19 game of parsimonious quality but the usual lavish amounts of fouling, moaning and mutual disrespect. In the first half, there were nine cautions for 'tick-them-off' stupidities - kicking the ball away, failure to retreat at a free-kick, a square-up involving the away team's number 3 (relevant for what happens later), and several over-the-top fouls, including one by the away team's number 8. Following his yellow card, he gets into a shouting match with several of his opponents and is immediately subbed out by his coach. Thank you.

As we walk off the field at half-time, I make a loud appeal for both teams to focus on their football in the second half. I might as well have been asking them to put their their mobile phones in a locked box until they'd read and memorised the Complete Works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The tone of the game is no different, and although the home team is dominant, they're also dirty too - two players get sent out for five minutes for reckless fouls. When one of their forwards fouls the previously cautioned number 3 with a quarter of an hour left to play, the victim comments that if he gets fouled again, "I'm going to break someone's foot".