Durley 1-4 Burridge

Saturday 13th February
Kytes Lane, Durley

This match was being watched by a man with a clipboard whose job was to assess the referee's performance, jotting down any notes when he deemed that the referee had misjudged a situation. As a result, his right hand had a somewhat busier afternoon than Burridge goalkeeper Ryan Jones.

The referee - think Ray Stubbs with a charisma bypass - seemed to have learnt everything he knew about people management by studying the content of a letter from the Inland Revenue. His decision to book Bryn Schwodler, who had been given a right seeing to from Durley's number five, was less plausible than the plot of Teen Wolf Too*.

Kristian Hewitt struggled to come to terms with it. It, being the referee's reasoning behind showing Bryn a yellow card, not the 1987 film that doesn't star Michael J Fox. With the referee unable to give Hewitt a satisfactory explanation he decided to show him a yellow card instead.

From this moment on Burridge and this referee were never going to get on. Nor were Burridge and Durley for that matter. Both teams displayed a free flowing style that was built mainly on swearing. Lesser teams would be content with trotting out vulgarities like shit as nouns, but in this contest they were used as verbs and sometimes even adjectives.

Kev Willsher and Marc Judd were the third and forth players to be shown yellow cards. This all before Rich Allan was sent off. Trying to recreate an earlier unseen incident, whereupon Durley had been successfully blurring the boundaries between the football and Paul Dyke's head, he was given a straight red card, for what one can only assume was for invading the referee's personal space. Unfortunately, air head-buts still don't translate very well in polite society.

By this stage Burridge were already winning the game 4-1. Two first half goals from Ben Rowe and one from Bryn Schwodler were added to by a goal early in the second half by Durley's number five.

It came from a back pass. It was difficult to gage what irritated the Durley number five more, scoring past his own goalkeeper from the kind of angle that'd have Pythagoras telling you to stick your hypotenuse up your arse, or Burridge centre back Paul Dyke's making sure everyone within a mile radius knew how much he enjoyed it. Either way he was very pissed off.

Durley did score a consolation goal, but their revival was not sufficient to stop Burridge getting their first win at Kytes Lane.

Burridge lined up in a 4-4-2 formation

GK:Ryan Jones
LB:Paul Dyke
CB:Kev Willsher
CB:Kristian Hewitt
RB:Sam Hewitt (Jay Schwodler)
LM:Marc Judd
CM:Mark Sanderson
CM:Justin Newman (Mark Reeves)
RM:Bryn Schwodler
CF:Rich Allan
CF:Ben Rowe (Paul Andrews)

*That was not a typo. Teen Wolf Too, is actually 'too' as opposed to two and it's really not worth your time.

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