Blue Saturday

‘Blue’ Saturday.

What more does a football fan want?

A live non-league match at home in the arctic conditions of South Wales and then an armchair watch of the ‘World in Motion’, as England tried to create a ‘New Order’ out in the boiling hot desert of Qatar.

First up was the visit of Gosport Borough to the ‘igloo’ home of Merthyr Town -the Met Coaches Stadium at Penydarren Park.

It was ‘snap a dog off a lamppost weather’ today, with the barometer plummeting faster than the price of Bitcoin with much pre-match speculation as to whether or not the game would see the full 90 minutes played out.

As the visitors had travelled all the way from Hampshire, it would have been cruel to have postponed the match at the very last minute or worse still to have abandoned it at half-time.

Besides it was not just Gosport Borough that had suffered a long stretch but referee Haydn Lavender must have too.

He had the longest arms of any official I have ever seen -way out of proportion to the rest of his body - which was ‘handy’ because he didn’t need to signal to his linesmen like normal people- he could simply reach out and tap them on the shoulder.

The smart money was that either his Mother’s maiden name was Gibbon or that his ancestors had suffered at the hands of Torquemada, the Chief torturer of the Spanish Inquisition.

With the ‘long arm of the law’ ready to kick-off, he nonchalantly tossed a coin in the air and I knew my feet were at risk of chilblains, when the visiting captain, Woodford correctly called ‘Ice’.

But this young Merthyr Town team ‘warms’ the cockles of my heart, week in and week out and it was the Home Team that had the best of the opening exchanges with Gosport keeper White, the busier of the two, with Merthyr Keeper Will Fuller on his ‘other line’ ice fishing where the penalty spot used to be.

The Martyrs for the first half hour were busy dancing on ice and seemed more suited to the ‘blue’ hoary ground conditions than their Birdseye visitors.

Fraser Thomas was enjoying himself, as the lightweight former ‘Cardiff Devil’ skated passed people like he was Nancy Kerrigan, until that is he was suddenly and violently hit with a telescopic batten of a challenge from Gosport Captain Woodford.

There was less force when White Star liner, the Titanic hit that iceberg- but whilst in 1912 the band played on - the player should have seen red - with the banned then sent off.

Fortunately for Fraser, he managed to jump in the air, otherwise he would have needed an alternative ice pack and been rechristened ‘Freezer’ Thomas.

And with one leg missing he would not have ‘stumped’ keeper White into conceding a penalty seconds later.

A through ball from creator God, Alex John, put the youngster clear only for him to be felled like a Norwegian Christmas tree by the keeper.

The inspiration behind the Roger Hargreaves character , Mr Tickle pointed and then touched the penalty spot which was an amazing feat really, as he was still in the other half of the pitch, discussing fishing tips with Bob Mortimer, Paul Whitehouse and Will Fuller.

Talk about ‘spotting the keeper off his line’.

Ricardo Rees stepped up to take the spot kick with all the confidence of England striker Harry Kane.

Unfortunately, he took his impression of Kane to the extreme and took out a passing flock of Canada Geese on route to Bryn Bach Park Lake.

Not even detective ‘Jack Frost’ could work out why the normally reliable striker had missed on that slippery blue surface.

Every dog has its day but today that dog needed to be a St Bernard.

Thirty seconds later and it was not Jack Frost but midfielder Jack ‘Skellington’ Evans who had put the Martyrs ahead in what was to prove the ‘Nightmare before Christmas’ with a low drive into the right hand corner of the Gosport net.

Jack the Pumped in King?

And soon that lead was doubled after the pass of the game from Alex John, that set up Samba King, Curtis Jemmett-Hutson, to bend the ball around the despairing lunge of White and into the old onion bag for a two goal lead.

At this stage of the game , Merthyr Town looked like running away with the match and could and possibly should have been out of sight before the interval.

And then came the moment that changed the fortunes of the away side.

A hopeful punt over the top found striker Brett Williams ‘Medway’ in the Martyrs half and with Merthyr ‘gamekeeper’ Will Fuller, busy fighting a recently re-wilded polar bear for an Atlantic salmon, Williams slammed the ball into the net dislodging razor sharp icicles that had formed in the first half big freeze killing the Bruin.

It was so cold in that goal that when the ball crossed the line a blue light came on.

2-1 at halftime and unlike the other Jack -Dawson that is- played by Leonardo Di Caprio in the James Cameron blockbuster - the visitors had been ‘handed a lifeline’.

In the Away Dressing room, newly installed Gosport Director of Football directed a football at the head of his star striker Abdulai Baggie.

He then proceeded to use the hair dryer treatment on his team.

Not the Alex Ferguson kind but the Revlon one, as he thawed out his players and transformed them from frozen Neanderthal cloggers into Netherlands Johan Cruyff ones.

Less than seven minutes from the restart and the Hampshire Outfit were level, as much travelled midfielder Brad Tarbuck evaded the clutches of Yakubu and crossed for the amusingly named Wooden King to beat Fuller from ten yards.

A few years back, the Yak would have put that ball into row Z and Tarbuck in Prince Charles hospital for the night, but sadly the 65 year old has lost his pace.

By now the pendulum had swung fully towards the Gosport side and so many Merthyr players had now gone missing that Home Manager Paul Michael was busy cutting out and pasting their photographs from the programme onto the back of milk cartons.

It was only the cool head of Pirlo lookalike , Matthew Harris that single handedly kept the baying pack of Gosport Timber wolves at bay.

Merthyr knew by now they were ‘skating on thin ice’ and despite the best efforts of Julian ‘Lewis Hamilton’ Axhorn at half time (in his Formula One ‘Alpine’ Team Frost-mobile) they had better get their skates on or they would be in a right hole or hit an upright or two.

An abject lesson not to ‘rink and drive at Christmas- or you might cause
an Axhorn-dent.

Coincidentally Fuller had hooked a skate too.

With Merthyr pressing hard for a winner that their first half performance so richly deserved , Gosport flooded forward and it was only a last ditch tackle on Wooden from Noah Smerdon that prevented the Away Team sealing it at the death.

The referee however, despite the obvious fact that the ball had gone in the natural direction ( having made contact with Noah’s splintered foot) awarded an early Christmas present of a free kick in an Amazon ‘prime’ position in a central position just outside the box.

With the Harold Lloyd Memorial Stadium clock on 92 minutes and with MrTickle indicating that there were 5 added minutes on his elastic- like hands -the resulting Tarbuck free kick was parried back by Fuller only to see the rebound smashed in by the same player for the winner.

Seconds later, despite Gosforth bringing on ‘Sub Zero’, Mr Tickle blew up early, as unlike me his pea had unfrozen.

As he ‘let it go’, I darted for the mens toilet to unfreeze my own personal pipes.

It had turned out to be Blue Saturday for Merthyr Town and a potential Happy Monday for the Hampshire outfit.

Except that is the Englanders were soon to have a case of Les Bleus themselves.

But not caused by a cold but more of a bad Qatar.

As three lions on a shirt were sadly replaced by three tears.

Blue Saturday all round then.

Boz