PFFC face early cup exit

PFFC 0 International Heritage 3

Owen, 12 November 2006

 

Played out at Wormwood Scrubs, against the foreboding backdrop of arguably the capital's most notorious slammer, Philosophy Football should have been remanded in custody for crimes against the beautiful game. Starting with just nine players wasn't the ideal situation, but PFFC was weathering the storm in the early stages of our first cup battle in some time.

The pitch was smallish but very uneven and the surface was matched by this horrifyingly English cup spectacle. Lots of 'blood and thunder' determination, dogged defending and tenacious tackling summed up the PFFC response to an agricultural Heritage side.

Philosophy competed well considering the lack of players. Clarkey, who arrived without appropriate footwear for grass, carved out some twisting, bustling runs that resulted in a couple of narrow misses and an unconverted pinpoint cross. Eric and Vito bolstered the team just before half-time, and at 0-0 we were confident that we could make the breakthrough in the second half.

Alas, the cup is full of shocks and surprises and despite having the better chances we couldn't make them tell, and once Heritage edged ahead we couldn't catch them and they wrapped the game up. A sterling effort in the circumstances but not really up to scratch in this game.

An honourable mention must go to new Italian recruit JB, who made an impressive performance on the wing with his jinking runs although later in the game displayed a canny knack for the art of pugilism. A Heritage striker took exception to JB's close proximity to which JB responded with two lightening quick jabs to his 'boat race'. Thankfully Marco raced from his duties on his goal line to restrain the PFFC newcomer from inflicting any more damage. Needless to say the young referee was oblivious to all of this and once play had stopped due to the commotion he calmly enquired "what happened?"

 

PFFC (4-4-2, eventually): Marco; Andy, Dodo, Alan, Owen; Kieran, Eric, JB, Jose; Clarkey, Vito.