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Feb 3rd Good God, Goose electrofried.
Geese 4, Bees 5
It’s been a difficult week for poultry. A touch of flu for a few means 160 000 of the poor critters get slaughtered in Bernard Matthews’ land, then carted over to Staffordshire in articulated lorries to be shovelled into huge furnaces and melted down to glue. Noone deserves a fate as horrific as that – it reminds me of Dante’s Inferno and of a nightclub I used to frequent, Shades - a squelchy Netherworld for lost souls, which lost the first s on its neon sign and became even darker. Yes, these are hellish times indeed but they can always be counterbalanced by God’s magnificence – the devil may have some of the best tunes but he doesn’t have them all. At approximately 1105 last Saturday, a gaggle of Canada Geese took off from their pond behind the far goal. As they soared majestically into the sun, surfing on the thermals and doubtless full of love, one of their number, perhaps distracted by the events unfolding on the pitch below, flew into a power cable. The resulting sparks, a muffled squeal and a trumpet sound reminiscent of a giant cock being pulled from the slackest of vaginas, reverberated round Goosedale as the bird fell, dumb, dazed and dying to the ground. It’s enough to make even the most stalwart believer question his Maker. As we gathered round its carcass, these words came to my lips, a fitting eulogy for the goose: it was as if God himself came into my brain and whispered the words in my ear:
“We pray for thee, the glorious goose , our
Hearts beating the eternal rhythms of our lone
Togetherness for,
Together, we are alone. Make of that
What thou will and shower us with thy love
Oh father for thou art the power and the glory and
Thy deeds travel with thee as manna from heaven
Itself on days when our weary souls lift up their voices
To sing thy praises, for thou art the almighty and
we thy lambs.
Cuddle us in thy arms, next to thy sweaty armpits
Inside thy jumper made from the wool of our mother
Which ewe you ate, having skewered her and roasted
Her for the kebabs of the muslim brothers. Is this
A crusade or a jihad? We only ask since surety
Has flown and doubt has returned to peck out
These eyes that once could see but now are dead.
The goose hangs heavy on this frosty morn but
With thy blessing, he is reborn and all is once
More as it should be.
Our lord, thy geese heard the devil cry in the night
And it hath unsettled them, aye verily thou speakest
Of rejoicing but where is the slice of chocolate
Cake thou promist me? And why dost some
Brothers call thee Allah?
Are they too gormless to see that thou art
All?
And what part doth astral physics play
In this dance of delusion, this dolorous
War of confusion and subterfuge?
And as always, we await thy bidding,
Thy blessing and, aye, aye, thy love
Our lord, who giveth and taketh quite
Rightly, quite so.
May the heavens continue to sing thy praise
Even if thou art but a figment of man’s imagination,
Or some dance of the same. For tis all astral hokum
To us. All hokum.
Hokum all yea faithful
Joyful but for now untriumphant.
Amen, our souls, amen, amen.
Oh yeah, and Hallelujah too.”
God’s majesty descended and I swear by the hand that so lovingly and gently strokes the pussy, that a miracle happened and that bird came back, albeit rather dishevelled in appearance, with a few singed feathers and a bent beak but it staggered around for a while and then took off to rejoin its brothers and sisters in their early morning jaunt over Bestwood. Reborn.
And yes, all is metaphor and heaps of ambiguity are sprinkled within just as the frost which lay over the pitch like sprinkled sugar, and hastened a call from Beeston.
Two calls from Phil “Two Hats” Dearden – the one in his guise as fixture secretary, the other as Beeston Team 4 capitano.
“What’s the pitch like? Both of ours are frozen.” This was at 0930 and I loved the notion that anyone had actually been up to examine the Goosedale arena, let alone was actually there now. I looked out across the backyard of my Forest Fields home, confident in the power of the sun to melt even the hardest of hearts and answered, “Yes, it’s perfectly playable. The game is on.”
Hoarse is the raven that announces the arrival of Beeston at Goosedale – “There, there , there they come,” they shrieked as three cars sped into the car back, coughing up a swirl of dust that danced and shimmied with the diamond air and the shards of sunlight pouring down on all of God’s children.
“Is it on?”
Oh yeah, oh yeah, it’s definitely on. I think Phil might be wasting his talents at Highfields – he runs a top of league team who play quality hockey and have enough attitude to dispense of Nottingham’s gnarled and knowing Team 4, he coaches juniors and he’s the fixture secretary. Do they appreciate him down there, do they take him for granted or has he been swallowed up by the corporate hockey machinery? Phil, do not underestimate the draw of the Goose, be open to her coquettish ways and allow her to set you free to play the hockey your heart desires - unencumbered, enlightened and emboldened…with love, with spirit, with freedom, come and warm thyself in the bosom of a club that will truly appreciate you. Our juniors need you, our players need you and the club president is allegedly prepared to offer you the delectable services of his daughter. But not the one who’s married.
This was a quality game played in a spirit and with a fervour that even the MIPPS had to appreciate. Sometimes, a MIPP has to realise he is not God, do the right thing, take the whistle away from his mouth and wave play on. A Lagerberg hattrick, some masterful wing play from Byrne and another quality performance from Sisson were quite simply not enough to subdue a Bees side who had arrived some 10 minutes before the majority of Nottingham’s team turned up. They are the deserved leaders of the division and I for one hope they break the Cannock – Lobrow duopoly.
As for the Geese, well we will take our lead from the poor electrocuted one – feathers ruffled, beak bent but spirit intact, we will soar once more for hockey like this will be rewarded, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Team: Fogwill, Kaye, Hannam, Llewelyn, Gallagher, Buxey, Byrne, Sisson, Lagerberg, Bett, Rogers.
MVP - Sisson. Tireless and tidy, he is in excellent form at the moment. Gallagher too put in an imperious display but the anality of his comment to the MIPP, though born of frustration, was unnecessary and beneath him.
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Jan 27th Forking Turnips.
The Nailers 4, the Fowl 1
“The wise man is distressed by his want of ability.” Wan King Yu, the proprieter of the Happy Mandarin, the city’s best-kept secret Chinese takeaway, at an imaginary location somewhere on Hucknall Road, offered up these words to me last Saturday evening. I had gone in there seeking a dish of spicy tofu with noodles and in a moment of rare candour, had shared my disappointment at this result. But that’s typical of the cunt. All he talks is of a proverbial nature, he is full of perennial and poignant Confucian philosophy. And all I wanted was a bowl full of chinese spaghetti.
This scoreline was a direct result of Team 4’s lack of decisiveness in front of goal: defensively, the side had held out reasonably solidly for 30 minutes, whilst at the other end – a series of good chances were created and spurned in a first half that ebbed and flowed like a woman riding the waves of a multiple climax. For some, however, it was all foreplay and no orgasm and Sisson’s primal screams, which reverberated round the Derwent valley, were those of pain, not pleasure. Frustrations, like turnips nearing fruitition, became unearthed but, sadly, there was noone there to harvest them.
Few know it but the pitch at Belper is located on the site of a former turnip patch. The first time I’d played here back in the 80s, on a November afternoon under a sky as heavy as a pregnant white rhino, I had looked out of the clubhouse window to see a lonely figure toiling on the land. His fork was piercing the frozen soil and one by one, he was uplifting the swedes from their frosty beds and lobbing them into a great sack. A tough job, but they are a hardy bunch of turnip pickers in this delightful town and in Belper HC they have a club to be proud of.
Some twenty years later then, it would seem the ghost of that labourer lives on - for on Saturday, Nottingham were the turnips and the man with the number 2 shirt was the turnip gatherer – he dug, sliced and forked his way through the Geese’s midfield as easily as a turd passing from a vegetarian’s arse and played a role in a bountiful harvest of the aforementioned brassica Apparently he has given up on the Belper first eleven and playing away (at least that’s what his wife thinks) and if he’d done it a bit earlier, then the home team might not be looking down the soil pipe of relegation.
I say they are a club to be proud of, but you do have to wonder just who they’ll let in these days. Rumour had it one of Nottingham’s former members was to play centre poke. Sadly, he been poked out (into the 5s or 6s, the 7s or even the 8s). Interestingly, it seems the MRHA website has failed to post the player’s transfer up on its webpages, or there has been an infringement of the rules. Not that I give a fuck but thanks to the Mole who feeds me these swedes.
With spring coming a little earlier each year, it was no surprise to see the March hare take to the field in the shape of Ben Heeley. The epithets abound with this young player but on Saturday he displayed all the characteristics of the genus Lepus in the breeding season: his performance was characterised by much leaping, chasing and premature ejaculation. Especially in front of the goal. His afternoon was illustrated by one moment of unwitting and painful comic genius which saw his electric pace take him clear of a defender, off the pitch and smack into the goal post, causing the entire frameworkl to shift half a metre back. However, he was not the only one to appear before the luminous yellow goalie as a rabbit caught in the glare of some bright headlights and this was the thing that stuck in the craw.
Wan Kin, of course is right and whilst I lay claim to no wisdom, it is true to say I was particularly fucked off with this result – team 4s worst in 18 months. Still, we are at home to Beeston on Saturday and, in readiness, I’m off to lay several dumper trucks’ worth of sand on the pitch (see Oct archive).
Team: Walker, Kaye, Hannam, Buxey, Gallagher, Llewelyn, Byrne, Sisson, Bett, Heeley, Rogers.
MVP – Hannam – with his week-on-week improvement, Ben was the only one in contention for this week’s award. Well played, sir!
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Jan 20th Enjoy the ride…
Studious boys 3, Deliquents 4
There are few more depressing commercials than the one for the Vauxhall Zafira. In a terrifying continuum of the theme, the two scary boys sit in deckchairs, in front of the offending vehicles whilst their families frolic about on the beach. “It’s good to see them enjoying themselves,” says one. The other nods sagely, “Aaah, this is the life. I think I might get my head down.” They speak in soft Northern accents and with a world weariness that belies their ages. The ‘joke’, of course, is that they are old men inside young bodies. But it’s wearing thin, and is so mind-sappingly shit because it suggests that this is best the target audience could hope for: a safe, dull life of quiet desperation. And, of course, by implication, it appears to be saying that Vauxhall drivers are only capable of this kind of vaccuous observation and should be satisfied with their humdrum aspirational materialism. The advertisers who dreamt up this shite should be taken to a rat infested cellar in Baghdad where they should be incarcerated for the rest of their years, attached to an intravenous drip of Stella Artwat, fed a diet of pork suet puddings and, as in A Clockwork Orange, have their eyes fixed open on a screen showing endless loops of that mealy-mouthed dumb bitch Jade Goody whingeing on about how she’s eaten all the chicken Oxo cubes and if the queen of fucking Bollywood wants a fight, then she’s the man (sic).
I’d just been watching this shit when the Nottingham University Fixture Secretary rang me.
“Hi, it’s Mat here, calling on behalf of the Uni 4th team. I was wondering if we could rearrange the game on the 20th as it’s in the middle of our examinations.”
Naturally, I laughed - for this seemed a whole lot funnier than a Vauxhall car ad.
“Go on,” I chuckled.
“Well, some of our guys are studying really hard and it would be a great help if we could play it a couple of weeks later. Say, on a Sunday.”
“Fucking hell, things have changed since I was there.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think that a couple of hours away from your revision on a Saturday afternoon isn’t a good enough reason to postpone a game of hockey. Please pass on my regards to all the swats in the side and tell them we look forward to the match.”
“So that’s a no then.”
“Too fucking right.”
Postponing a game of hockey for examination purposes? What kind of crazy fucked up world are we living in – where men-in-boys are used to shift thousands of cars, where virtual amoebas like Goody get air time on national tv and Universities have examinations on Saturday afternoons?
And more significantly, how much longer can we expect these increasingly tortuous ‘reports’ to continue? There are 9 games left and I can only take so much before something cracks. I just hope it doesn’t happen pitchside at say Cannock where there’s one knocker too many or at Belper where I get nailed to the cross I’ve carried on my back these last few months. Or maybe it’ll be at Stourport where Jesus will reappear, club me over the skull with a Mercian Hammerheadand and carry me off to the great astro turf in the sky.
Still, there are always consolations and this result provided the metaphorical shot of heroin after the cold turkey of losing to the Burghers of Bridge.
The first ten minutes of this game were, from the Geese’s perspective, the hockey equivalent of the fucking Zafira ad – low on thought, completely without aspiration and as lazy as the two boy porkers. Once the passing improved though the team were back in it and Rogers smacked a goal in just before half time just as Gallagher and his cohort, Sisson, began to wrestle the initiative away from the young students. A perfectly legtimate goal by Heeley was disallowed because the MIPP said he’d used his backstick. Absolute nonsense but there was no “homer” cry this year – the team, Byrne apart, were playing to the whistle. The irony of this is, of course, that Heeley’s stick has more of a bow in it than Buxey’s cock…
The welcome introduction of Oliver Young began to tell and he finished off an absolute chocolate éclair of a move to put his side two up after 40 minutes. The more the students attacked, the wider grew the gaps in their defence and it followed that two more goals were rattled in by Rogers and Young to put Nottingham 4-0 up with ten minutes left. With the game seemingly won, the Doctor was taken off. Unfortunately, the rapid concession of 3 goals lead to a rather frayed final ten minutes but with Llewelyn magnificently deflecting a goal-bound strike away from its target and Kaye and Hannam similarly defending well, the team held on for a thrilling victory. The student in the 52 shirt became only the third player in 20 years of manful hockey to fail to shake the hand of Andy G – I wasn’t sure why but maybe it had something to do with a delicious sandwich of a tackle he and Sisson committed at the top of the D. Either that, or he was in a hurry to go and sit an exam.
Yes, dear reader, the Geese are back and the ride, as always, is a lot more fucking eventful than anything Vauxhall can provide.
MVP: Walker. On ProPlus, on his toes and on dominant form, he takes the plaudits in a match where the entire team lifted its game. Splendid stuff.
Team: Walker, Kaye, Hannam, Buxey, Llewelyn, Henry, Gallagher, Bett, Sisson, Young, Heeley, Byrne, Rogers.
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The whiff of nostalgia…
Jan 13th - Geese 2, Burghers 3
There are some things that are hard to swallow because they are such obvious lies. When the mickey mouse-voiced Beckham says he’s moving to LA not for the £128m but to help develop the game, you have to laugh because he’s lying. When my mother served me a plate of tripe and onions and said, “Eat this son, it’ll put oak in your penis,” I knew she was being playful with the truth. And when my ex told me she loved me, I laughed in her face for hers was the kind of love that rises into the mouth only to disappear like vomit over the side of a cross channel ferry.
The truth? She is a capricious whore and I wouldn’t recognise her if she went down on her knees and began fellating me. As the raven of time comes to rest on the chimney pot of my days and feeds its young on the slippery worms of disappointment, I realise the world is not the place I hoped it would be but an infinite hole, awash with lies, ignorance and the tears of my childhood. You don’t need eyes to see, my friend: you need vision.
Once upon a time, there used to be another hockey club in Nottingham and they were called Notts Gregory. There is a Gregory Boulevard, named after the club when it died in the mid nineties. Interestingly enough, the name has, according to my dictionary, three meanings – “a gentleman of fashion”, “a hangman” and “a party held on St Gregory’s Day (March 12th)”. God knows which the founders were inspired by but my money’s on the second.
Some of us will remember the pre-astro days and the clubhouse they had, appropriately enough, just behind the fag factory on the banks of the Trent at Grove Farm. The clubhouse was on stilts because the area was prone to flooding, the pitch, consequently, was heavy and you were always guaranteed a shit game but at least a match with attitude. When they folded, their players were scattered like autumnal leaves across the city’s clubs – a few to Players, some came to Goosedale but others chose to mix it with the good burghers of Bridgford.
Bridgford 4s, have been struggling this season – they languish at the wrong end of the table and when they lost their opening game to the Geese, they were well beaten (check out the archive report) by a determined side who know how to grind out results and can play a bit too.
An injection of two or three former Gregory players, however, seems to have given them some much-needed steel and spirit and, though it pains me to write this, they outfought the Geese in this flood-lit evening encounter. In fact, the old hangmen seized the wild fowl by the throat and throttled the fuckers to death. Gallagher’s man was off within 10 minutes for taking hold of his face, and the Kojak sweeper, Gilbert, should have been dismissed for body-checking Byrne as he threatened to break through. Luckily for him, his former Gregory teammate, the MIPP Bexon, issued only a green card and he was allowed to continue after a stern talking to.
Bridge took the lead twice, the Geese hit back through Lagerberg and Rogers and at half time it looked like they were beginning to seize the initiative. Unfortunately, it didn’t shape up quite as we imagined it would, and WB scored a third. Nottingham had plenty of chances to win it but none were taken – their keeper had a blinder. Our two did not.
Some readers have complained about the colourful language at play in these musings. As someone with only a mild form of Tourette’s syndrome, I feel it incumbent upon me to tell them to fuck off. Famous sufferers include the character in Shameless, the boy who won big brother and the Everton goalkeeper Tim Howard. Believe me, it is a debilitating condition where your brain keeps creating the worst obscenities it can think of and involuntarily spews them out. It is a terrible pain in the arse when you cannot control your thoughts. Imagine getting married, being asked if you accept her as your beloved wife and blurting out in front of the congregation, “Fucking vicar up arse with horse’s cock.” Or appearing in court, being asked how you plead and ejaculating, “The judge prick swallows my hotspunk.”
Speaking of court, a de-wigged, tanned and out-of-touch Snelus, the third team skipper, made his debut for the 4s this weekend. Or, did I imagine it? At the other end of the social scale from our much-lauded barrister, we have David. Rogers Rogers Rogers – I say it three times because the loveable one had that number of one-on-ones with their goalie. When I told the vets captain, Anderson he said “That’s not enough. He needs more than that.” So, with a decent goalie, two canny stoppers at sweeper and centre half, it seems that, suddenly, Bridgford have become a team of battlers, not disimilar to some of the Nottingham posse and it’d be fun to see them escape relegation. I wish them well and congratulate them on being the first team to win at Goosedale this season.
It did occur at a couple of points in the game that I’d had enough of the ridiculousness of this sport and that I should simply stick to the running, the cycling and lung bursting climbs up mountainsides. But then I thought, hey, it’s only one game and if we are to come out with anything then it is the realization that it doesn’t matter and that losing is simply the other side of winning. As Lao Zi (a Chinese wise guy who runs the Happy Mandarin on Hucknall Rd) says, “Suppress your desire for glory and you will never be disappointed.” And that, unless I’m mistaken, is perhaps as close as we’ll get to something approaching the truth.
Team: Walker-Fogwell (half each) Kaye, Hannam, Buxey, Llewelyn, Gallagher, Sisson, Snelus, Byrne, Lagerberg, Rogers.
MVP: Lagerberg. The only one in the team capable of not playing any hockey for 5 weeks and returning with consumate ease. El maestro.
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Dec 3rd - Spunky Leek at Goosedale as but Geese off to a flyer.
No, not another reference to the plucker Rogers firing his jism across the showers but an acknowledgement of the opposition. Let me make it clear to the few who read these pages: Leek, after Nottingham, are my favourite team – lead by the crafty cockney, the penguin suited Mr Grubb (who surely is the most sartorially-elegant captain to visit the Goose so far this season), they play with spirit, verve and steel. Even at 5-1 down, they were still up for it and though the defending on the last goal was as resolute as a wet tissue on a cruddy-sphincter, they deserved the final say in another entertaining game.
I say another because I’d been watching the curtain raiser: Team 1, also hosting Leek HC, leaked in 5. Yet again, as I noted all the huffing and puffing, I wondered just what the fuck had happened to the notion of playing with wingers? Where was the width? Why play with such large gaps between defence and attack? Ah, the questions flooded in but the answers proved elusive. Still, they did score 6 to secure the points and for that spirited climax, I salute their efforts.
So when Kaye adressed the team, the idea was simple: “Attack, attack, attack is the theme for this afternoon’s contest,” he said. The classic 1-3-3-3 system was employed and it suited the pitch – for let’s remember, the wide open spaces of Goosedale are there to be utilised and with a forward line of Byrne, Lagerberg and Rogers they duly were. Stretch the opposition, pull them out wide and see where the gaps appear. Goals followed – Rogers, Britton and the returning Gallagher put the Geese 3-1 up at half time, Lagerberg, the ever-eager King of Goosedale, added a brace and the game ended 5-2.
But why oh why the yellow cards? The MIPP Bexon took Gallagher’s £2 off him, then gave him 2 yellows to send him off for the first time this season. With that sort of outlook, perhaps he should wear a hijab? A quid for each challenge? Did Leek appeal? No: they got on with it. And this, the only Nottingham team that had not received a single yellow in the first half of the league season. Tetchy? Possibly. Unfair? Certainly. Unnecessary? Most definitely. Does it matter? Well, not on Saturday – in fact not at all as it had little bearing on the game. However, the second half dismissal of Byrne for an alleged elbow offence received little complaint. At the other end, the Don – and this man is the ultimate legend – he made his debut for the club in 1954 for fuck’s sake! – knows how to play the advantage. Or rather, if he doesn’t see it, he doesn’t call it and he allows the play or the players to sort it out. A MIPP to my own heart...
And so we reach the season’s half way mark – 4 points more than last season, which is improvement – leave us nicely-placed in the division, though the Bees are buzzing along 9 points ahead. It is theirs to lose one feels but they are beatable and they are to be challenged, so let’s see what transpires in the new year as we move away from the winter equinox and towards spring. The winter break is now upon us and I’d like to wish everyone the thick yuletide log they deserve: tuck in and I’ll see you in the New Year.
MVP – Sven Lagerberg, the Kenyan Scandanavian wizard, as eager and full of it as he’s ever been. Oh, and he also dished up the pie and beans and washed up the pans after the game.
Team: Walker, Kaye, Hannam, Buxey, Llewelyn, Gallagher, Sisson, Britton, Byrne, Lagerberg, Rogers, Barber C.
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