Comrades Reserves 0-7 Burridge AFC

Saturday 5th April
BTC, Stoneham Lane

I don’t usually eat McDonalds, but Friday was different. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Tom’s Audi . It’d gone four o’clock and he was taking it steady at sixty, going eastbound down the M27. We were going back to the office off junction 9, after three hours in Winchester, without so much as a sandwich, stuck in meetings about; well, I can’t remember exactly, because all I could think of was the drive-thru at McDonalds off junction 7. I ordered a Big Mac meal and once Tom freed the long blonde hair from the melted cheese of the first of his quarter pounders, we stopped in the car park to eat. The few seconds it took to empty the carton of fries into the polystyrene box that sat on my lap, were as long as I could wait before leaving the jagged imprint of my crooked teeth in my Big Mac, unaware of the ketchup drizzling down my chin.

It was inevitable that my tie, which hung below, would soon be mottled with tomato ketchup. A target of that width was impossible to miss at such close range, thoughts that were echoed by anyone watching Burridge take on Comrades the following afternoon at BTC, on Stoneham Lane. Burridge were already three nil up, after goals from Sam Schwodler, Jaimie Hewitt, and Rob Kelly, who on a further attack drove the ball across the penalty box, its arc reaching Bryn Schwodler without interruption, unmarked and a yard from goal, left to do the inevitable and send the goalkeeper to retrieve the ball. Which he did, from a nearby garden.

Somehow Schwodler contrived to stab over the crossbar, causing a bigger cheer from the small crowd than the three goals before it and the four more that proceeded it. They came from Hewitt’s second, as well as Luke Sanderson , Greg Baker and Paul Andrews, who made no mistake from the comparable long range of five yards out. Finally, Burridge had done what they’ve threatened to do all season and gave someone a good shoeing.

4-4-2: Stanfield, L.Sanderson, Dyke, M.Sanderson, Kelly (J.Schwodler), B.Schwodler, Baker, Newman (c), S.Schwodler, S.Hewitt (Andrews), J.Hewitt (Rowe)

Pre season comes early this year…….

Justin Newman has organised an end of season meal on Friday 25th April at 8:30pm at La Cantina in Bedford Place – Burridge players only!

We’ll need to pre-order our food, so send me your email address to marksandy101@aol.com so I can send you the menu.

The end of season do will be at the Bugle Inn in Botley on Saturday 14th June.