December 4, 2008

  • Mongrels Tour of Manila – as seen by Midgie! My own report up soon…

    Teams from more than a dozen countries made their way to one of Asia’s centres of high-culture, Manila, to participate in the annual international 6-a-side football tournament.  The second-best nation in the world (Scotland had 1 representative) had 3 teams taking part, namely The Animals, Carnegies and Taiwan Mongrels.  As a Mongrel, I can only write about their footballing weekend.  Any Animals or Carnegie boys are welcome to add their thoughts, but remember that for legal reasons these must revolve around the football and not alleged off-field antics…

    Every World Cup has some instantly memorable moments, but the Manila tournament turned out to include a veritable slideshow of classic incidents from history.  From the off it looked like it could be a disaster of Scotland 1978 proportions, when veteran Mongrel Dave Roberts attempted to quaff a few cans on the flight over but merely succeeded in spilling the contents onto his crotch.  Twice.  Not only did he look like he had pissed himself (and at his age we can never be sure), but because of this incident and to demonstrate his team-building skills, Mongrels Captain Russell Curtis nicknamed him ‘Spazzo.’  The omens were not good.

    After an early night for everyone, we pitched up bright and early to kick-off our campaign on Saturday morning against Seoul British FC.  The other Taipei teams had already had great wins in their openers (although Chris Grimaud was one unhappy Taipei-er as he was turning out for the team that Carnegies beat), so we were looking to make it 3 out of 3.  Our cause was not helped by the elements.  With the sun out we had all applied suncream, only for the heavens to open 10 seconds before kick-off.  As the rain teemed down, the suncream inadvertently caused the same temporary blindness you get when shampoo goes into your eyes.  Conditions were awful and misplaced passes numerous, with most players showing the balancing skills of drunken flamingos wearing high heels as they battled vainly to stay upright.   There were chances at both ends, but Seoul took the lead and looked like hanging on to it until two minutes from time.  A harmless ball through the middle was missed by their unfortunate defender who slipped in the treacherous conditions, leaving Keelung Dave one-on-one with the keeper.   He kept his cool and calmly slotted it into the net to rescue a point.  Last year the Mongrels failed to score a goal, so one game in we had already achieved the minimum required.  Special mentions in this game for Russell, who dictated play from the centre of midfield despite having the turning circle of a Saudi Arabian oiltanker, and also John Dixon and Jason Lowe, who both put in abject performances!  I suspect those two rascals may have broken the strict curfew of the night before and had joined some other athletes in painting the town red and having a cheeky beer or two.  Jason in particular was left red-faced after coming on for 3 minutes before having to come off to continue his pre-match warm-up of vomiting into a carrier bag that he cleverly attached to his ears in the style of a horse’s nosebag.  Classy.

    Next up were one of the pre-tournament favourites, the Manila Nomads.  With such formidable opponents, what would a pragmatic captain do?  That’s right, put our scorer in the last game back into defence (we were playing  1-3-1), a position in which he had never played before.  Genius or madness – what do you think?  We gave it our best shot against a quick and mobile passing team and created a couple of good openings, but certain players seemed to be enchanted by the ball when in possession and were unable to release it despite the right-midfielder going on surging runs into acres of space on numerous occasions!   Rob Fowler made some fine saves, but individual errors from yours truly saw us trail 2-0 at the break.    We got a goal back after a little bit of magic from Polish Rob early in the second half, and we had the Nomads rocking for a spell.  I completed my hat-trick of fuck-ups by losing possession trying to take someone on deep in their half, and they broke quickly to score the clincher.  Full-time 1-3.  A disappointing result but a decent performance overall, the 2 Robs being our star men.

    It meant we had to win our last game to progress to the Cup competition on Sunday, and we were up against HK Swiss.  Russell the Tinkerman had yet another plan – this time, do as many hacks, stepovers and comedy dives as you can.  Keelung Dave took up the challenge by falling over early on to win a free-kick after, I dunno, a slight breeze irritated the dimples on his cheeks or something, at least I assume that is what happened as there wasn’t a defender near him.  As our superior unfitness told, our opponents took the lead, but we got back to level-pegging after a sublime piece of skill and cracking finish from Keelung to double his tournament tally.  With the game finely poised, Russell opened his bag of tricks.  He lumbered forward doing about 7 stepovers in a row.  It sounds impressive, but it was like watching a slow-motion replay in real time.  As soon as an opponent appeared, Russ lost possession and they promptly scored, making Dave in particular apoplectic with rage.  Dave’s anger was particularly justified as he didn’t deserve to be on the losing team in that game, he was man of the match winning every single 50-50 and a fair few 40-60s too.  It finished 2-1 and we ended  3rd in Group A on goal difference with 1 point.  It sounds crap, but as Sunday would prove, it was no disgrace in what turned out to be ‘The Group of Death,’ a term first used at Mexico 86 when mad footballing genius Maradona almost single-handedly (if you pardon the pun) dragged Argentina to World Cup glory. 

    A team-building exercise was held in the evening, with some lawless behaviour that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Wild West being observed; the only difference being that most of the outlaws and bandidos engaged in said behaviour were sub-par footballers and not romantic heroes like Buffalo Bill and co.  We were due on at 10am on Sunday morning and arrived a full hour before kick-off, so eager were we to do a thorough warm-up. Either that or Dave Roberts acted like an over-cautious grandmother by forcing us to leave ludicrously early ‘in case of traffic.’  Most of us could have done with an extra hour or six of sleep, but fortunately our first opponents in the knock-out Plate competition were the Sunday Boys, who had conceded 23 goals on the Saturday.  Going against the Mongrel spirit we won the game comprehensively, going 3-0 up before half-time thanks to a cool double from Polish Rob and a, em, ‘thunderbolt’ from Dom.  It should have been more, with one sitter by myself causing manager Rob Mason to encourage me by gleefully shouting ‘ye couldnae score in a brothel Midgie.’  A nice easy game though, with John Dixon finally turning in a decent performance.  We were into the quarter-finals, where we would play old foes Carnegies.  Ringside seats were at a premium as many looked forward to witnessing a winner-takes-all battle of the 2 Taiwan based teams in the Plate.

    Carnegies were pretty cocky pre-match, with one stray comment of ‘we can’t lose this’ making up the bulk of Russell’s teamtalk.  Perhaps it was the fact they had had a bye into the quarters and subsequently extra sleep, perhaps it was looking at all of us and noting that the ivory skin of our players was rapidly turning bright red thanks to the heat, perhaps it was that the bulk of Mongrels players play for Shane in the TPL – who knows what made them so confident.  We gave them a tougher game than they anticipated, with Polish Rob being unlucky with some well-crafted chances and every Mongrel harrying constantly to regain possession when we lost it.  Special mentions in this match to Jason, who got stuck in to tackles with relish, and John Dixon, who put in another Gerrard-esque performance (minus the comedy dives), no doubt inspired by the prospect of gaining a Carnegies VIP card if we won.  Carnegies did have the best chance, but it was blazed over from about 1 yard.  Full-time 0-0.  3 v 3 golden goal.  We sensibly picked our 3 fittest players, Russ, Polish Rob and Keelung Dave, to play it.  We relied on some great stops from Dave to take it to sudden-death penalties.  A quarter-final penalty shootout in a major tournament involving 2 predominantly English teams?  Could both of us lose?  The first 2 penalties were scored, then Russell stepped up to fire us 2-1 ahead.  But no!  The referee spotted an infringement during his run-up and it had to be retaken.  What drama!  It was squeaky bottoms time for those of us watching from the halfway line, but Curtis kept his cool to hammer the re-take into the net with the aid of a double deflection off of the keeper’s knees and then the underside of the bar.  The announcer, stood about 40 feet away, described it as ‘a good penalty.’  Carnegies put their next penalty past the post and the highs and lows of football were encapsulated with the opposing reactions:  Huge shouts of ‘YES!’  and ‘Ah huvnae felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored for Scotland against Holland in 1978’ went up from the Mongrels, whilst the Carnegie who played the Chris Waddle/Gareth Southgate/David Batty etc role burst into tears a la Gazza at Italia ’90.  Unbelievably, we were in the semi-finals.

    Another home team awaited us in the semi, this time Nomad Braves.  We made a sterling start after Polish Rob fashioned a chance out of nothing, turning a defender and finishing with aplomb to put us 1-0 up after a couple of minutes.  This came just after Keelung had ‘done the double’ by doing a stepover followed by a comedy dive in quick succession.  With increasingly tired legs on both sides, chances came and went, with us Mongrels increasingly reliant on Rob to keep us in the lead.  Near half-time their striker got them back on level terms.  Soon after the restart we found ourselves 2-1 down as things got increasingly tense.  We had already had a fair shout for a penalty in the first half, then Keelung Dave was felled only to get a load of verbal abuse from a defender for diving ‘like a fairy.’  Said defender proved HIS manliness from the resultant corner whilst marking me.  Instead of grabbing my shirt or pulling out the hairs on my arms like a proper defender, he decided to tickles me, which I found both bizarre and yes, slightly arousing.  We were into the last minute or so, but our constant pressure seemed like too little too late until Lady Luck came to our aid.  A throw-in towards Rob was intercepted by a Nomads defender, whose looping header went backwards over his own keeper’s head and into the net.  2-2 and sudden death yet again.  The same three heroes from the quarter-final played golden goal again.  What followed was so far-fetched that Hollywood would reject it.  A Nomad hammered in a shot that smacked off the underside of the bar and in.  Or so they thought.  But this time, unlike in 1966 when Geoff Hurst’s similar shot saw Engl*nd cheat their way to victory in the World Cup Final, the referee (who was not Russian) controversially waved play on as our opponents celebrated.  30 seconds later and with the Nomads again in possession, our secret weapon was unveiled.  Forget the ‘Cruyff turn,’ the ‘Russell Hustle’ saw our captain tackle their keeper on the halfway line, and he could only look on forlornly from the ground as Russ sauntered towards the empty goal, amazingly resisting the temptation to do even one stepover or keepy-uppy along the way.  Unbelievably, this bunch of rogues and vagabonds from the lower reaches of the TPL were on their way to the Plate Final.  The drama wasn’t finished as some idiot ran onto the pitch in front of Russ as he made his way toward goal.  Maybe he thought it was all over.  And it was when Russ tapped in to make it 3-2 to us.

    We only had 30 minutes to take on water and attune ourselves to playing in the Final.  The Carnegies boys (and some Animals) very graciously cheered us on, and we had a few other extra supporters in the crowd too.  It was a re-match of the first game of our campaign against Seoul, the team who had been runners-up in the Plate the previous year.  We gave it our all, but ultimately it proved a bridge too far.  Whilst we had hoped that Russ would drag us to glory like Maradona in ’86, he could only drag the exhausted squad to the Final like Maradona in Italia 90.  It was all square at half-time but Seoul went ahead in the second-half.  This time there was no deluge of rain, o.g’s or rubbish penalties to save us, and we had to settle for the runners-up spot. A shame in the end, but everyone agreed that getting a consolation decoration in the form of the Plate Finalist gong was nice and it made the smiles return to our faces, as such decorations tend to do.  On receiving it Russ put the award down on the stage and did a couple of farewell stepovers.  Lovely. 

    Every Mongrel can be proud of their performance, particularly when you look at the achievements of the other teams in our group on the Saturday.  The Nomads won the cup, Swiss finished 3rd, and of course us and Seoul were the top two in the Plate.  It’s not often ‘The Big Four’ all play each other on the Saturday.  The fact that 7 players were nominated for MVP also shows how much it was a team effort, but in the end Roberts and Russell deservedly shared the award for their performances over the weekend.  Well done to everyone taking part, hopefully you can go one step further next year.


Comments (1)

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *