This is the precise description of events happened on October the 23rd, 2016

It was a nice afternoon, Raiders were fully prepared to face the enemy in what was about to be the clash of the titans.

We started with a strong formation with Gary on the right, Olly and me central back and Sipho on the left. The midfield was Edwin, Mick, Craig (i still can’t believe you are younger than me) and Nico.
On the front was the last presentation of Hoggy with a healthy ankle and the second game of Raiders’ new acquisition, Sean.

Outside the field we had amazing backup, they were Fingers M.D., Ben, Luke (recently upgraded to midfield), Ohashi, Scott and The raven.

While we were having the inspirational and emotional talk from our coach, we could see how the other team were preparing themselves. Our first thought that something was wrong was when the goal keeper was putting his gloves on glue and then on broken glass, resembling his Idol, JC Van Damme in the movie Kickboxer.

We didn’t care much about that, and we kept thinking to ourselves that it will be just another calm and easy game. Of course… we all thought that but Nico, who was focusing on all the wrong things in the world, just to make his anger grow. As we know, Nico is more a Dark Side enthusiast than a Jedi, he welcomes the anger and uses it in this battles with the opponent, and the referee.

The game started, I remember clearly that Wednesday, a sunny day, perfect temperature, it was a terrific day for football and friendship. Birds singing, flowers everywhere, unicorns passing by and saying hello while smiling. Its was a beautiful day for football. But football is what we didn’t have.
After the first flying kick our team received (don’t remember exactly who was the victim) we realised it was not going to be a football match, but more likely a UFC gang fight, mainly because the referee didn’t say anything on most of the fouls that they have committed.

One of the highlights of the day was when their goal keeper start yelling “allah akhbar, and death to the infidels” while he was running towards Aaron (I think the goalie knew that Aaron is from the U.S) and jumped with an almost perfect kung fu kick that even Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat can be jealous of, and landed his foot of fury on our striker stomach. Both fell on the ground. When the referee ran towards them, everyone thought that it was going to be red card for the goalie and a penalty for us, but instead of that the referee said “Nguyen (the goalie) wins, Fatality”, and the game just kept going.

We tried to avenge what happened, stepping on them, kicking them and stuff, while they were practicing all kind of martial arts against us. The ref was betting on which was going to be the last man standing with a bunch of unicorns on the side of the field while all this was happening. So that was it for fair play. The ref showed yellow cards to 2 or 3 of our guys while to them he was showing score cards depending how good the technique they had on the karate moves was, and I think I heard the ref yelling “no mercy” when he was talking to a Vietnamese guy.

After that, all got blurry and confusing.

I just have some memories of Gary running like there is no tomorrow and playing so good that he got MOTM, Sipho, all over the place asking for the ball and giving the best to get as forward as we could, Mike and Craig managing the center of the field, Hoggy shooting from everywhere he could, Sean running always towards their goal, running over every single little vietnamese defender that tried to stay in his way. I also remember Olly, holding together, running more than his body could actually run, and of course Nico, calling “maggots” to everyone and picking fights with all living things around him. I have to say, in his defence, it was totally frustrating playing against 12 people, the ref definitely was one of them.

At some point, during the game (not sure when) our coach started making some substitutions, that brought Ohashi with his ninja moves and speed running on one of the wings, Ben who also got aggravated by the ref and the lack of fair play by the opposition, Aaron, who had to be taken to surgery to extract the goalie’s boot from his stomach, Luke who demonstrated why he can handle the wing position, Wouter, the raven, who tried and tried to break our bad luck that day but unlikely he couldn’t score and Scott, who brought calmness to the defence and allowed Olly to breathe a bit.

They scored one goal, I get that from the title of this report, don’t remember much about it. But for sure was not something to remember. Besides that, it was an amazing performance from our goal keeper Mirko who saved many shots (as usual) and kept us only one goal down.

It was an unlucky match, we had the ball more than them, mainly on the second half. What I can say is that we had our moments of good football, when we can feel as a TEAM. It is nice to see those moments when we can play our Raiders way of playing, passing the ball, enjoying the game and being calm.

RAIDERS