Manifest FC is going through a renaissance. That’s right, a RENAISSANCE. From the unforgiving darkness of four straight defeats, suddenly we’re gazing into the brilliant, blinding lights of sexy football (Ruud Gullit™). Every Kosmirak pass was like a Botticelli brush stroke, every Crackstar shot was as beautifully executed as a Titian saint, every Francis bellow echoed like Michelangelo’s footsteps in the Sistine Chapel. In short, it was a splendid (Crackstar™) victory.
Yessssssssss. We got back to winning ways with our best single game goal tally to date. The circumstances were adverse; we had five players (they had an extra man), we’d already played a game five minutes before (see below), the rain was streaming down and we were on a 4-game losing streak. However, with space to play the passing game that has been so faulty recently, we were utterly dominant.
Now, you may have noticed that there has not been a match report for a while. Obviously, there is a completely reasonably explanation for this, and it certainly wouldn’t be because last week we had a double bill whereby we were so comprehensively hammered that my crushed morale and leaden fingers were not able to type two gloom-laden reports. Certainly not! In fact, it was because (strangely undetected by the media) the entire internet broke down due to a tear in the space-time continuum (see Back To The Future parts 1, 2 and 3). Inexplicably, the league marked us down with two losses.
For the first time, Manifest FC experienced the feeling of consecutive losses. It feels a bit like being punched in the solar plexus by Mike Tyson after he’s just been told that his favourite restaurant won’t serve him a side of sweaty ears to go with his child’s blood soup starter. But, taken in the context that it was played, this match was actually one of our very best performances. Had it not been, it might have felt like getting punched in the solar plexus by Bob Lynch (and NO-ONE deserves that!).
It’s not what it looks like, it really isn’t. I know the score looks like we’ve been bent over and mercilessly spanked for forty painful minutes, but that would not be fair. We were spanked for 38, but there was a good 2 minutes of the match in which we really showed Unit 1 who was boss – it was just unfortunate that these two minutes were separated either side of conceding lots of goals.
Heading into the last game before the halfway point of the season, things were looking good. After the beautiful sunshine and salvaged point of last week, we had a bustling squad going into this game. The only absentee was captain Richard “Gets it in the gonads” Hanney, who was preparing to head back to Argentina to spend Easter with his family. We knew we’d miss Hanney, but without our sensai things started to fall apart.
Going for the 8-7 results hat-trick, we narrowly fell short – thwarted by a mix of great saves and poor finishing. In truth, it was probably a fair result. Although we we ran them ragged in the second half, they had pretty much done the same to us in the first, and it was only a heroic performance by Mike Garlick in goal that ensured that we were still (just) in the game at half time.
No, your eyes do not deceive you, dear reader. It was again another 8-7 one-goal-margin thriller - except that it wasn’t that thrilling. In fact it was a bit of a shambles. Last week we really grafted for the win; this week we hung on against a team that we should have put to bed like a sleepy granny in the first ten minutes.
This match was tighter than a nun’s… early morning prayer routine. It went down to the wire - via special goals, ping-pong post action and a dash of violence – and offered firm evidence that we are very much in the right league. We were damn wheezy by the end, but it’s now two wins on the bounce for the Manifest juggernaut.
Posting our first win in the big boy league, we dominated, dug deep, dominated and then dug deep again, scraping home with a score that probably didn’t do full justice to the ebb and flow of the game. In the end, a number of big performances from Lynch, Kosmirak and Ecuadorian international Stewart Williams made the difference, and we walked off with three points jangling around in our pockets.
