Tom Anns has a Dribble

Simon Cooper

Wisbech away. The late pushback. It is a highlight on the fixture list every season. At least we travelled in the month of March this year and made it out of there whilst the sun whilst was still up.*

Meanwhile, back in Cambridge, Jon Mann was welcoming baby Sophia into the world. He assures me that he has already explained to her that life begins at the green cone and ends at the red cone and that one explanation should be enough. The next few years should be interesting.

New goalie, Chris Watson, had landed off the slow boat from Cape Town only two weeks previously and has already now seen the (non-)natural wonder that is The Fens. He was keen to say that it is at least comparable to the Cape of Good Hope and Table Mountain. He is a very polite young man.

Jack Chalk was in combative mood from the moment we arrived. We hadn’t yet made it from the club house to the pitch before he was already berating the umpires for not blowing a ‘stick tackle’, having had his scoring tool caught up in the low-lying branch of a passing tree. His fires well-stoked, the hunt for goals began in earnest.

It was immediately apparent that the steady rainfall had taken the usual zip out of the Wisbech surface, but the M2s are a wily old bunch and figured out pretty quickly how to play to the conditions; break quickly with longer passes when you can and keep possession in the tight when you can’t. Aesthetically pleasing goals resulted, with the attacking contributions of Engine and Mathews particularly conspicuous, and also Chalky poked in a couple. Menzies was quietly seething that the right post short corner tip-in routine appeared to have been usurped by a left post tip-in routine.

Not ones to do things the easy way, we suddenly found ourselves nervously hanging on to a four goal half-time lead. We looked to the sideline for reassuring tactical and emotional guidance, temporarily forgetting that both Oven and Jemima Puddlefoot were missing in action. Allsopp, oblivious to his team’s struggles, was meanwhile seeking nirvana, idly solo shuttling down by the touchline bin. It was touch and go for a few minutes, but the South boys managed to cling on to the break.

The second half seemed to take an age, mainly because we’d have all much rather been inside getting ready to watch the rugby than being out in the rain. A youthful home side rallied, to their credit, but we managed to hold them at bay and bang in another three goals. I think Belgian Al may somehow have got one, but by this time I had got bored of nursing a hamstrung Anns and stationed myself as a sort of "semi-spectating but not actually paying attention as thoughts turn to writing the match report and oh wait a minute didn’t I need to check in my calendar what I am doing on Mother’s Day?" right winger.

After the game and safely back in the cosy environs of the home side’s pavilion, Menzies was quick to offer advice on the efficiency of the showers. The rest of us enjoyed his doubloons being quietly thereafter scalded.

The Man of the Match and Lemon voting was relatively straight-forward this week. Jack was a worthy winner of the former, although his partner-in-crime up front, James Mathews, also deserves credit for his willing running. At the other end of the achievement spectrum, Alex has now accrued 6 lemons in 13 appearances.

*Editor’s note: Because lots of people don’t like driving in the dark.

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1
Jack Chalk
Player of the Match

Four goals? That should do it.

Alex Baekelandt
Lemon of the Match

Unfortunately caught short in the Wisbech changing rooms.