By Joe, we’ve missed him. But, relax everyone, The Bastard is back – and he’s not forgotten where the goal is, either.
For eighty-odd minutes of this, it looked like being one of those days. I don’t know if the gravity is greater at The Rooks’ Kent training facility, or whether Corinthian-Casuals fill their balls with helium, but we smashed chance after chance so far over the bar that NASA kept having to nudge the Space Station out of the way. If Corinthian-Casuals announce they’re folding, it’s because we’ve squandered their balls budget for the next decade.
We didn’t just punt presentable chances over the bar, either. On the 16th minute, Ronan Silva brilliantly nicked the ball and put Deon Moore through one-on-one with their keeper, who looked like he’d rushed to the ground after collecting his GCSE results. Moore took pity on the child and clattered a low shot straight at him.
I was so busy Tweeting this squandered opportunity that I entirely missed them breaking up the other end and scoring. Honestly, I’ve no idea what happened. Far be it from me to make excuses, but Boyesy didn’t get a photo of it, either. I’m starting to wonder if this goal was even scored at all or whether we’ve all been done up by some kind of illusion. If the scorer appears on the Isthmian website as D Blaine, we’ll know we’ve been had.
Anyway, the home fans and the referee all seemed to be taken in by this stunt, and for the next hour or so, we dominated possession but couldn’t get the Edward Woodward.
Silva came closest. Razz wriggled free down the left, cut the ball back to Silva from the byline, but he smashed it against the crossbar with only Zammo McGuire in the Casuals’ goal to beat.
Enter The Bastard. Tony reached into his cool box, sliced off a piece of raw liver with his pen knife, fed it to Joe and ordered him to kill. (Boyesy didn’t get a photo of this either, disappointingly.)
Joe took a while to scent blood. And when a defender clumsily bundled into the back of him in the penalty box, Joe was booked for diving. No red card, but a red rag to a bull.
The equaliser was pure Bastard energy. Joe got to the byline, muscled his way past a flailing centre-back and then spanked a ball low across the six-yard box with such venom that a defender lost control of his bowels and heeled it into his own net. Corinthians credited the goal to Joe on FootballWebPages. Only a lunatic would try and take it off him. (If you’re on the Lewes FC Supporters Group on Facebook, you can watch Hannah Thompson’s video of the goal here.)
The Bastard almost won it at the end too. Tom Carlse charged down a clearance and the ball looped up in the air. Joe got his head to it and it dipped over puberty boy but bounced back off the bar.
A point taken when it should have been three, but The Bastard of the South is back on his throne. Winter is coming.
Rooks: Carey, Elva-Fountaine, Carlse, Champion, Young, Olukoga, Silva, Skinner, Coleman De-Graft, Dalling, Moore
Benchwarmers: Yao, Muggeridge, Pritchard, Murrell-Williamson, Taylor
Supporters Club Man of the Match: A bottle of Dire Wolf’s blood for The Bastard. Clinical.
Boyesy’s brilliant photos:
