League
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21st
Jan: Brum Uni 1 Nottingham 2
As
the intrepid travellers arrived at the launch pad ‘Priory’
The Mission Captain ’Titch’ Appleby distributed the orders
for the rocket convoy to follow Vickery ’The seive’ Kendall
to the landing point on the Planet Brum. Brum was one of the Western
Mid Land planets in the centre of the Ingerlish galaxy, it was a wet
planet, constant rain kept the surface habitable for its skin breathing
amphibious population; the Brummies. The Brummies were slippery customers
who relied on the rain to keep their warty skin moist enough for the
O2 transfer across their slimy epidermis in order to breathe. It was
the Brummies who originally invented the ‘water-based pitch’,
it started as an adaptation to the harsh ‘Sand Based’ Arid
environment synonymous with Hockey for years, these archaic pitches
had hindered the Brummies development in the game, but, since its conception
the Hockey Organisation for the Planets Entered into the League for
Enigmatic Special Skills (H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. for short) had
slowly been bringing in reforms to make all pitches ‘water based’
within the decade, due to it being a better surface.
Brum was not too far from the planet Notz where the team were based.
The Alternatives, as they were known on Notz, were from a mixture of
planets, Jamie ’Shifty’ Webb, Tommy ’Lofty’
Drake and Tom ’Daisy’ Hewitt all hailed from North Hampton
originally, a leafy planet much like Notz except a number of sporadic
ice ages had hindered evolution, as a result, its dwellers were strong
and fast physically but quite the opposite cerebrally. There were a
couple from the outer reaches of the galaxy, Ashley ’Wilf’
Sheen and Will ’Freshy’ Hutchings were from the smugglers
ring just beyond the outer circle, these were used to the tougher environment
of the badlands but were bringing their stable brawn with them to the
HOPELESS premier. Ed ‘Flash’ Gordon Kendall hailed from
a unique band called the Stree-Ksofpi-Ss, they evolved from Humans and
were originally scientists from Notz. Their genus evolved as a result
of an accident on the space station they were working on while gathering
information about space travel; the Looner 1. It was the first permanently
manned station to be built in the galaxy but after 50 years in service
one of the retro boosters that kept the station in Notz’ orbit
failed and the station drifted off into space for centuries, They survived
by recycling everything organic on the ship, over time the scientists
passed on their knowledge to their offspring and eventually they mastered
wormhole space travel, eventually, they managed to return to Notz. There
tall thin appearance is indicative of their long space jouney coupled
with the monstrous inbreeding required to further their species. James
’Paddy O’Murphy’ Browne was from another galaxy; GayLick,
and it showed. It had taken him and the team a long time to figure out
a way of communicating in a way they both understood, but now, thanks
to Tom ’Schooldays’ Brown; who invented the new language
and studied language on Brum, everyone knew what each other was saying.
Brown, originally from the Heartlands of the galaxy moved to Notz after
studying on Brum, his language research facility on Notz was established
as a result of his Nobel peace prize for developing the new language;
Potato Latin.
The rest of the team were from Nottingham or its moons, Alex ‘Bongo’
Crabtree, Dan ‘Titch’ Appleby, Chris ‘Rozzer’
Hall and James ‘Brains’ Hewitt all hailed from Notz while
Dan ‘Papa’ Rippon was from one of Notz Northern moons; MansFeeled,
it was a rough prison planet, where no one goes to or comes from anymore.
It is believed that Dan was born in captivity to a beautiful woman,
it is also said he was raised by retards, and if you ever meet him,
its hard to argue with the facts.
The team all manned their rockets and prepared for take off, all co-ordinates
were set to follow Kendall’s or Tom Brown’s craft but shortly
after take off Ed was a distant dot on the horizon (is there a horizon
in space? discuss) and Tom had got himself lost en-route to his former
home, intelligence doesn’t stretch to map reading. Subsequently
it was now every man for himself.
It wasn’t long until Ed Vickery ’Flash’ Gordon Kendall’s
rocket was cooling down after re-entry, Tom ’Lofty’ Drake
and Will ’Freshy’ Hutchings were finally wiping the last
of the soiling from their once clean under-crackers, they managed to
clean their hands just in time to avoid too much embarrassment as the
rest of the team arrived one by one. ‘Papa’ Rippon’s
rocket was finalising its landing sequence as Ed gloatingly spat “what
took you so long?”, Dan emerged from his capsule, slowly looked
up at Ed, taking in every nuance of his face, angrily he catalogued
every feature, stored it in his memory, and, when he was least expecting
it, still seething with his characteristic short temper Dan would let
Ed know exactly why it took him so long. Soon all the rockets were safely
down and their passengers disembarked ready to get their game heads
on, the idle chit chat turned to the journey and how everyone’s
week had been the normal strained small talk of a group ready to concentrate
on one objective for 70 minutes. Curiously the previously dry atmosphere
was starting to become very damp and the indigenous rain soon started
to fall heavily.
They started to walk to the changing ‘favela’, as they did
Ed burdened by his heavy cumbersome kit dropped his helmet and fell
behind the group, ‘Papa’ saw his chance to show Ed why it
‘took him so long‘, he sprant (it should be a word) at the
unsuspecting Ed, pulled out a sharp cylindrical tube which held a dark
viscous fluid in its core, he lunged and poked ed on the shoulder, as
Ed turned, still startled by the poking he had just received Dan frowned
and growled ‘This was why it took me so long punk....’ he
grabbed Ed’s startled shoulders, pushed him to his knees and started
to draw a diagram of the route he had taken from Notz to Brum, illustrating
why his car couldn’t reach the speeds Ed’s could, where
he got caught in traffic and where he had stopped to let an old lady
cross, both satisfied with his reasoning, they rose from their knees
and continued to the changing favela. The rain was nearing torrential
now and they scurried the final 100 metres to the hut.
As they unpacked their kit and started getting changed all the Notz
players were aware they had left anything but enough preparation time,
they hurriedly changed and raced on to the pitch partly due to the match
starting in fifteen minutes and partly to escape from a room filled
with naked overweight middle aged men. They jogged briskly onto the
pitch and saw their slippery opponents had been moisturising for some
time and look set to go, Captain ‘Titch’ gathered his men
and issued his pre-match talk:
“Right, we haven’t got much time to sort everything out,
but we’re only going to win this game by playing as a unit and
being organised from the off, right, get a ball between two and start
getting ready...”
The players broke from the huddle and ran to the ball bag, but no matter
how hard they searched the ball bag eluded them all, had the evil and
slimy Brummies hidden the ball bag in an attempt to hinder Notz warm
up? worse still, had they half inched it? the true terrifying fact was;
’Titch’ hadn’t packed them.
After the best warm up they had ever had, Notz lined up against their
young amphibious opponents somehow ready. The Brummie centre forward
passed the ball to his Centre-Mid and like a possessed army unit, Notz
stepped up a press the like of which will not be seen for some time.
After a few passes Brum gave the ball to ‘Daisy’, a quick
piece of interplay down the right resulted in the first Notz shot on
goal, one of many for the half.
Notz Kept their press high and strong, the Brummies only ventured out
of their half once and that was due to ‘Lofty’ smashing
an audacious round the back passing manoeuvre to Chris Hall who subsequently
employed the anti-Kal one touch pass to the on rushing Tom Brown who,
like an epee wielding frog fencer guided the ball through a menagerie
of defenders onto the end of Brains stick who won a short corner, all
this with the majority of the Brum midfield and attack bogged down in
the Notz half. Well done.
The style of play Notz adopted was authoritarian, bossing in every sector
of the pitch and drying Brums attacks to small insurgencies, the Defence
was outclassing the Brum forward line and, when not on the ball the
midfield and attack were forcing the Brum attack down their weaker flanks,
Brum’s main strength was in the middle but with Papa, Shifty and
Brains bossing that area like territorial gibbons they had to go down
the wings where their weaker players lay. The weather was worsening
and both teams, even the aquatic Brummies were struggling with the sopping
conditions, it was beginning to resemble a 1970’s football match
with the long balls holding up in the puddles which were still growing
across vast sections of the pitch.
Like waves eroding a fragile beach with their backswash action, Notz
battered the Brummies defence like a chalk coastline, it was only a
matter of time until defence was breached and that opportunity fell
to the cuddly Paddy O’Murphy. With a jink here and a jink there
he was through and passed a deceptive shot under the leaping keeper,
Notz celebrated like it was 1999 and set up for the push back, constant
pressure with little relief hounded the Brummie defence into partial
submission, there were only a few attacking forays into the Notz D,
but any short corner or attacks were dealt with competently by the Notz
keeper and his defence. At half time, with score still at 1 nil the
Brummies disappeared into the changing favela for a stiff talking to.
The second half kicked off with Notz hoping to press on as before, the
first few minutes, as always, were hard fought in the middle as both
teams tried to force their opponents formation to buckle under pressure,
both clashed violently in the centre knowing that one team had to lose
its rigidity and would leave a gap for an opportune individual. Notz,
sensing that stepping too high would weaken their middle stepped back
a little and allowed the Brummies a few minutes to pass the ball around
in front of them, as usual, moving the ball nonsensically from left
to right wasn’t getting any penetration and as the Brummies weakened
in search of an end product Notz seized their chance and caught them
on the counter attack. ‘Freshy’ broke Brum’s pitiful
attack down as though he was taking candy from frogspawn, really mean.
As he carried the ball forward he released the ball to the Skipper who
played a cross field ball to the Gaylick representative to slot home
his and Notz second, delirium
swept the pitch but it was to be short lived. As the Brummies pushed
back once more with a renewed fervour, Notz switched off and after some
of the worst hitting and shooting this side of the Milky way the ball
bobbled unconvincingly into the Notz goal, the score pegged back but
still two goals to one in Notz favour, Yet Notz knew there was still
time to lose it.
With a returned grit and determination Notz pressed once more winning
a brace of corners, Bongo skying one or two and Daisy missing narrowly.
From one of the broken down corners Brum broke quickly and caused a
7 on 5 in the Notz D, some drastic, controlled and patriotic defending
later the ball was clear and safely out of the way.
The Game came to a close as it had started with Notz stepped high in
the Brum half forcing some strange ‘keep it in the corner’
routine from the Brum left back. Although the score line didn’t
suggest it, this was much more than a 2-1 victory, Notz had led and
punished from the first whistle to the last and could count them selves
unlucky not to have destroyed a team that had previously been held in
much high esteem. After the match Titch was quoted as being ‘more
than pleased with the result’ which begs the question, why didn’t
he just use a stronger word than ‘pleased‘?.
As they went to dry off you could see the anticipation around the Notz
team, they knew they couldn’t have had a better start to the season,
Top of the league, what a way to signal your return to the top flight,
they and everyone else in the league knew it, Notz were back. Notz could
Launch home later content and with a renewed fervour to reach the intergalactic
race for Europe.
Brum however have suffered two defeats, one to the champions and one
to the upstarts from the league below. To take a culinary angle, Brum
are like frogs legs; sophisticated and when served properly are exquisite,
but why have frogs legs when you can have the cream? which, as Notz
are proving, always rises to the top.
Al
