Captain's Email #1: 03-07-2012

In a bid to play catch up with real-life, I will be being a good Loutish Vice-Captain and publishing the rambling warblings of the Üm Lout Captain Alex Green to the troops here. To start off, here is the match report from Week 1, against Shaken Not Stirred FC of the Summer League...


Morning all,

Well, that was exciting wasn’t it?!  The Üm Lauts are very much up and running (for the first few minutes at least) in the race for the coveted Elms league title. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as me, I think that this kind of football is different to our usual uni kickabouts, so it’s going to take us a couple of weeks to really get going, but was definitely a decent start. Like our German heroes of the early 90’s, we don’t start tournaments well but, by God, we deliver come the business end.

I have a few memories from the day, highlights if you will. Please feel free to add your own:

Pre Match

• Walking into the Good Samaritan on my own in my Germany kit, to be greeted by a smaggle* of hostile faces, none of whom were Kevin
• Pete’s Evening Standard shinpads
• The traditional will-he-won’t-he saga of whether Jon will turn up
• Russell’s blue shorts and Joe’s grey t-shirt, ruining our professional look and contributing in no small part to our defeat
• My team selection as captain, complete with nervous breakdown that I might upset someone
• Dan and I trying some clever passes and shots, and none of them working
• Darryl asking the ref what he needs to do to get sent off, and us all looking confused at the ‘blue’ card
• Ben’s forlorn fish-pie face

Match

• My air-shot.  Complete with pirouette and faceplant, nowhere near the ball.  What an absolute belter and definite contender for a trophy come the end of the season
• Kev’s beautiful trap, shimmy, glance up towards the goal, quick breath of fresh air, check of the watch, scratch of the head, growl, pint of Guinness and a pack of peanuts before hitting an unstoppable shot, which was, well, stopped
• Joe’s non-stop encouragement**
• Our complete changing of the team every nine minutes, sprinting about for the first two minutes, then being tired out again
• Last ditch defending, John Terry style, from Russell
• Kev’s Beckhamesque through-ball to Dan
• Everyone being called Alex

Friendly Match

• Dan’s huge goalkicks, going out of the ground
• Darryl’s hassling, running and stamina, and hold-up work – this can win us the game next week
• Pete playing in red, and laughing whenever the ball (or I) got near him
• MY GOAL!

Post Match

• Battleships 2.  The single biggest waste of 50p known to man
• The ambience and atmosphere in that pub.  It was electric
• Our post match analysis, we were like slightly politer versions of Andy Grey and Richard Keys.

So…  next week.  Let’s try and take the momentum we took from the post-match friendly and build on that.  Hoping for decent opposition again, and that we can score a few goals this time.  I think it’s about shape and intelligence, rather than running and running, and that’ll come with games.

With love and Ümlauts

The Captain