Bowdon IXs 6 - Deeside VI 0

We knew that we needed to put in a good performance against Deeside who in seasons past are remembered for their divet-ridden grass-pitch, old blokes who are a bit too good for a friendly side, very tight games and proliferance of wrap-around sports goggles. This season however sporting a team full of young whipper-snappers and some bloke that could actually pull off an aerial ball without having to wind up and scoop the ball into the air like a grave-digger.

Last time, we asked God for help regarding the game so He froze the pitch. It became apparent during this rearranged fixture that He knew well and truly what He was doing.

The advantage of being a team that doesn't rely on fitness as its main strength is that where a Christmas break would normally severely affect your performance, taking in the order of weeks to regain pre-break levels of ability, in fact it seemed to take the Bees approximately 15 minutes to find their feet, and just a little longer to find the back of the net.

A ringer was drafted in, but Fishy's presence wasn't, I believe, the driving factor behind an excellent effort all round. More likely it was due to a rousing pre-match communication by President Hawkins of Churchillian standard.

Everyone played extremely well, passes went straight to the man, cross-pitch and line balls were perfectly weighted. Through balls managed to avoid Deeside's multitudinous sticks, Cooper found unseen wing speed, frequently tipping the ball past his defender and running onto it. Braithwaite's tackles seemed extraordinarily clean, West's stick adopted a magnetic quality, no ball making it past, even managing to hurl himself horizontally into tackles, though whether this was purely to please the baying crowd was hard to determine.

After half-time, during which the Bees had established a solid 2-0 lead and (my intelligence sources informed me) Deeside encouraged themselves by claiming they had conceded a couple of "soft goals" (one look at Chancellor Marshall's face proved there was nothing soft about them), the Bees seemed to find even more vigour.

Some excellent one-two work earned the Bees another goal by the author, who has incidentally organised his ante-natal classes around our next fixtures.

The extent to which everyone played excellently was exemplified during a 2-3 minute spell when we conceded a short corner. I suggested that I should run back to help the defence rather than El Presidente himself. Olly looked aghast at this proposition but seemed to go with it. Deeside pulled the ball out quickly and hit it hard at the bar. Lazy Barman leapt upwards and padded the ball safely to our defence with his left hand. The ball was swept upfield like lightning and knocked forward for Olly to run onto (again my intelligence sources seemed to indicate that with a ball in front of him, he's quite quick, though I would suggest that the unit of measurement here was RPM rather than MPH), dazzling the defence with nimble footwork, he wound up and melted the ball into the backboard.

Final score 6-0 Bees, an outstanding effort by all and an important win.

Incidentally I predict that during the coming game against Lymm on Saturday, Lazy will keep a clean sheet, the author will score a hat-trick and Olly will attempt to hand over presidency, place your bets early.

Anon