A hot afternoon with the stench of cheap chip fat and KFC battery chicken corpses deep-frying across the road ushered in the first game of the Cup campaign. Absent –  a match official. Great start to the season CSL.

Generously, the spotty young Pembrokians offered up a trained ref – saving us from a fate worse than being officiated by George Tan (that horror would befall the opposition A team at 3pm). Kick off better late than never. Under the guidance of assistant coach / captain / CEO / Number 10 / Superman-Yoda guy we took the pitch.

We started as we always do – like a myopic flock of under 7’s playing kick-and-rush. Thankfully a couple of Alonso-esque long balls put wingers Titus and Meershat through but the finishing was not to yield an early goal. A deep corner from Meershat at the 20 minute mark saw feisty new-comer Emir rush the ball knocking it past the keeper toward the line where Dicky Harris managed a wonder-strike tap in from 10 cm.  1-0.

The second half of the 45 saw the young-uns gain some momentum, pushing the ball around and making us run about in the heat. Bastards. Our touch left us as we panicked on the ball, failed to find space and generally became a shambolic mess. Our tactical response was to cast bitchy blame at each other like the cast of Desperate Scousewives. With the collected age of our back four (and a defensive midfielder and no’10) pushing our experience into the Cambrian-age you could hear the bones calcifying as the clock ticked un-mercilessly slowly towards half-time. But despite their momentary inspiration the Yellow scourge did not threaten pretty-boy-A Team ring-in keeper Dan Aiken’s goal.

There was room for improvement for the B’s. A second half speaking to from assistant-to-the-assistant-coach George Tan saw the team gain some insight into how the modern game was played. Apparently it’s all about possession and scoring more goals than the opposition. With this in mind we re-took the field rehydrated and confident in our new-found tactical wisdom.

Possession was indeed the name of the game as we eased the ball around the Pembroke paddock, people moving into space after passing the ball and pastures opening up before us like the half-time promised-land. It really is that easy. Then Meershat, galloping across the steppes of the left-wing blasted another scorcher. Blessed are the Turkestanians – they breed em’ good on the tundra! 2-0.

George Tan, Harry ‘Michael-Cain’ Smith and Justin Kanga substituted for some of our blessed aged, and like the heroes of Bondi Rescue they breathed momentary new life into the drowning-Indian-tourist that was the game’s latter stages.

The rest of the game was boring and hot and un-worthy of mention.

B’s man of the match – Amir: A tough scrapper, skillful on the ball. Mid field will be a tough place to win a spot this year – impress at training and on match days or go find a green-grocer with specials on oranges.