NLCC Crickets vs British Samurai

(2-2, Wakeford T, Wakeford B)

Richie Hall

Juan-Carlos Torres Navva

Mark Burns

Andy Hale

Salman Ali

Luke Buffery

Jon Robinson

Steve O’Hagan

Tom Wakeford

Ben Wakeford

Simon Creasy

A depleted crickets side, cobbled together in the Princess Alexandra on Saturday night, assembled five minutes before KO to face a British Samurai team fresh from defeating second-placed Dukes Head the week before.  British Samurai, playing their final game of the league campaign had arrived to Montenotte Road over an hour early, perhaps to sample Duffield’s warm and generous welcome behind the bar, and to check out the state of our very own field of dreams.  Had the Samurais not been of the ‘British’ variety, they may have felt more at home upon surveying the soaked paddy field of a pitch that this game had to be played on.

Given the conditions, both teams quickly realised that the sanctuary of the drier flanks were where the football should be played, and it was the Crickets who begun the brighter of the two sides.  Creasy and Buffery both went close from crosses delivered by the out-of-retirement Tom Wakeford, playing the side against whom he had broken his arm in their last encounter.  The Crickets domination extended to most of the park for the first half, as they managed to string some decent passes together, the midfield pushing forward and combining well without luck.  Hale volleyed just over, and Robinson just wide.  Top scorer Ben Wakeford, who’s chances had been scarce in the opening half hour, finally latched onto a through ball from Creasy, and successfully ‘nutmegged’ the ‘keeper, only to see his shot killed off in the mud like the fossils of Burgess Shale.  Talking of ancient rocks, the absence of Nicholson and Mills in defence left an untried combination of JC, Burns, O’Hale and Ali, who performed magnificently.  The Samurai’s forwards were clearly talented, but the Cricket’s back line restricted them to just a couple of long range efforts, both of excellently dealt with by Hall, back between the uprights after missing Cricket’s defeat against league leaders Music Choice the week before.

Samurais would have been more than pleased to reach the break with the match goalless, and while the Crickets coach, Guy Nicholson, offered encouraging words, the whole team knew that they should have been ahead at 45mins.

The Samurais began brightly in the second half, with Hall being called into action more regularly, and fewer chances materialising for the increasingly frustrated Cricket’s strikeforce.  Perhaps resulting from their frustration at not being ahead, the Crickets over-committed for a corner, and a loose ball from O’Hagan was latched onto by the Samurai’s pacy forward, who ran the whole length of the pitch to score.  One-Nil to the visitors.

A further dominating passage of play by the Crickets saw Buffery and JC combine excellently on the right, only for the move to do a George Michael, and break down in the bog.  The Crickets were finally rewarded when the ball broke for Tom Wakeford to slot home from the edge of the penalty area, the Samurai Keeper doing more than his fair share to help the ball in.  Not so much a screamer as a ‘Careless Whisper’, perhaps, but an equaliser nonetheless.  Half an hour to go.  Scores level at one-all.  Crickets again confident of victory.

The game then lost its way for quarter of an hour, with both teams seeming to forget the necessity of using the wings, instead opting for some speculative long balls down the middle of the pitch.  The Cricket’s fluent passing disappeared, and perhaps inevitably, the final two goals of the game came from set-pieces.  The Samurais went ahead, again quite undeservedly, from a corner.  The ball ricocheted in the box off several players before somehow finding its way into the back of the net.  With the absence of a Samurai player claiming the goal, eyes turned to the various yellow shirts in the box, but in truth no-one had a clue how we had let the ball in.  At this point the game could have gone away from us, as heads went down and the Samurais appeared to be becoming more confident in defence.

Thankfully, up popped Ben ‘The Hunchback’ Wakeford to level the game, as he bundled in a corner off his lumbar region.  A further couple of chances fell to the Cricket’s strikers towards the end of the game, but it wasn’t to be for the pretenders to the league crown, who continued their slump in league-form leaving an uphill battle to snatch first place off Music Choice.  Two-all the final score.