Mixed Fortunes for ATB

A day of contrast for ATB as Crystal Phallus fail to get it up

all the boys atb crystal phallus five a side Football sport

With the season drawing to a close the Boys approached our penultimate night of football with a determined attitude to continue the impressive from that has seen the team rise to the heady heights of mid-table.

Stevie G cheering on ATB from the sidelines

The injuries that had plagued the on-form team last week were still a slight problem as Sawko hadn’t completely recovered from his knee injury and Jonny ‘not-quite-such-a-star-player-anymore’ Brown had contracted tonsillitis again (he’s possibly a bit of a hypochondriac). Unfortunately G is still recovering from his collapsed lung in London and it doesn’t look like he’ll be back soon #prayforG.

The first team up were Crystal Phallus. Although they were at the lower end of the table their excellent team name surely deserved our respect. The starting line-up showed that the Boss was not resting on his laurels as Maticevic had experimented with starting 6 yet again. As magnanimous as always the Croatian coach placed himself on the bench along with Sawko. As Brown felt poorly he was allowed to go up front with support from Old Man Obi and Ewan ‘Roadrunner’ Powell in midfield. At the back the solid pairing of Atherton and Butler was continued.

From the off the Boys were clearly the better team, despite a particularly shrill set of Phallus fans doing their best to lift their ailing team. The Old man linked well with Jonny in attack, while Ewan yet again proved his amazing stamina by chasing the ball like a Duracell Bunny. After some good pressure Obi found himself in acres of space and smashed the ball across the face of the goal into the top corner.

Picture of Obi soon after his outstanding goal

He later added a second when a shot from distance dribbled into the bottom corner as the keeper just watched (not every team is blessed with a keeper as good as ATB’s). The traffic was not all one way though. Several shots on target had to be palmed away by the gangly goalie in order to earn ATB’s first ever back-to-back clean sheets. It has to be said that this is due in no small part to the new defensive pairing of Atherton and Butler who did a sterling job in fending off Crystal Phallus’ penetrating attacks.

Although Phallus did have a problem getting it up (the pitch), when they did they lacked the stamina to finish properly and the move often finished too early to satisfy the Phallus fans.

Later in the game Sawko came on for Ewan and Maticevic replaced Powell and came close to scoring himself but for a good save by the Phallus keeper. Sawko scored a well-placed poacher’s goal in order to keep himself in contention for ATB’s golden boot award. The 3-0 victory was deserved and gave us confidence heading into our game against Norfolk and Chance, a team yet to lose in the league.

This confidence was frankly misplaced. The team was quite simply much better than us and outclassed the Boys. However a 2-0 loss against a team of their quality is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed they beat our Brazilian foes League of Nations 6-2 and 3rd placed Carnatic FC 4-0. Despite their dominance we managed to keep a clean sheet in the 2nd half and can’t really complain with the loss. These two results mean that The Boys have now won 19 points of their last 30 and Maticevic hasn’t ruled out European qualification next season.

After the games the Boss had this to say:

“There’s not much to say about the first game other than we could have scored more. We were aware of their danger-man who lived up to expectations causing threats throughout the game but the same could be said about Adam. Obi won’t feature this week and I’m not sure about Jonny. We have a chance to end the season on a high so we can go into next season with confidence.”

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