by dint of smig

Tuesday 2nd December 2008 1:30 AM

This week it was 'my turn' to write up Sunday's match for the Corinthians. It was arduous work, and took a long time, but at the end of the day, someone's got to tell the truth.

Copmanthorpe 3 Corinthians 2

Despite the freezing conditions and the high tog-rating of the modern duvet, the Corinthians played in front of their biggest crowd of the season, with nearly eight people squeezed into the impressive Copmanthorpe Big Field. With both teams having a combined age of over a thousand years, the game fizzed with experience, and in a bright opening, Copmanthorpe saw the better of the early chances.

Maybe unnerved by the big crowd, or by playing in the shadowed and still frozen left-hand side of the pitch, Evans squandered a couple of chances, his shooting proving to be much tamer than his inner life. Coming into the light from the shadows, to defend a corner, the wily number seven remarked to Butch, Copmanthorpe's lively mid-fielder, that being caressed by gentle sunshine made him feel like a gorgeous butterfly. As the vegetarian dynamo went on to explain how the life cycle of a butterfly could be analogous to psychological transformation, or the awakening sexuality of adolescence, Butch scored with a bullet header from three yards out, despite little, if any, indication of having an inner life.

Although a workman-like performance from Evans, he had the wrong tools with him when he went to meet a teasing cross from John at the back post, electing to screw it wide instead of drilling it home. Soon afterwards, Copmanthorpe went two up and then, incredibly, added a third just before half-time, creating a score-line that was as flattering as Colin's new Billy Idol/El Hadj Diouf hair-do.

At two and a third nil down, away from home, in the seething, hostile atmosphere of a place like the Copmanthorpe Big Field, most over 35 teams would be dead and buried, but most teams aren't managed by the inscrutable Brianio. In broken Portuguese, the Selby maestro directed Evans to go up front with Brian, as a sort of 'meat and one veg' option, giving Ian and Wayne the fluidity in the attacking third to be gravy. With Andy Simmo as a tablecloth, Matt as mashed potato and Bob as Yorkshire pudding, and using Derek, Jack, Nigel and Rudy as cutlery, with Colin as a decorative candle, the Gordon Ramsey of the over 35's league conjured up a delicious forty minute feast of football.

With ten minutes to go of this pulsing encounter, Ian pounced on a loose ball, took it by the scruff of the neck and told it, in no uncertain terms, to loft over the keepers head into the top corner of the net. 2⅓-1! Brianio, although often incoherent after sunset, at this time of the morning was bright and alert, and in his self appointed free-role as a sachet of Bramwell's brown sauce, brought a spicy inventiveness, and much needed moisture, to the smorgasbord of the midfield. Five minutes later the Corinthians were walking in a winter wonderland, after Wayne Fontana crashed a mind-bender into the top left-hand corner of the Copmanthorpe goal, the bumper crowd gasping as the net bulged like an excited underpant. 2⅓-2!

Now displaying sumptuous skills, as mouth-watering as the post-match dogs-willy sausages, the Corinthians purred like a well-oiled metaphor. One suspected that the referee, bravely playing through the pain of a chronic moustache injury, was giving decisions against the Corinthians out of sheer jealousy. With two minutes to go Wayne Fontana released another smash hit, which only failed to chart by dint of Smig, the spoilsport Copmanthorpe keeper.

In the last minute Wayne released Evans, a novelty single, who when he joined the club was a scratched 45, spinning on a broken dansette of lost dreams, but was now bearing down on the Copmanthorpe goal with the ball at his feet, a song in his heart, and the hopes of his fellow Corinthians weighing on his shoulders like a huge anvil with a Saturday Guardian on top. Smig made himself big, but the rangy ex-vegan clipped the ball tantalisingly towards the top right-hand corner of the net, and in keeping with the last minute of an over 35's match, time stood still.

Somewhere, on the other side of the Eagle Nebula, new stars were being forged in the pillars of creation. Somewhere on the other side of the world, the liquid chaos of a cocoon was miraculously pupating into an iridescent butterfly of hope. Somewhere, on the other side of the six yard box, Brian was in space, waiting for a simple ball for an easy tap in. Quite soon afterwards, before you could say 'Why does Lee Dixon always say 'tattle' instead of 'tackle?', time started up again, and disappointingly, for the Corinthians, and lovers of justice and romance everywhere, the ball sailed over the bar. Evans pleaded with the referee to add a couple of minutes on, for when time had stood still, but the man in black he say no, and with a manly puff of his vein-popped cheeks, the officious official blew the whistle for full time, officiously. Afterwards, the mercurial Brianio was defiant in defeat. 'In a game like this' he said, his grey eyes twinkling, 'there's no winners or losers, only celebrants.'