Burridge 2-1 Wellow

Saturday 24th April
The Shed, Burridge

Half-time came as a relief to Burridge. They'd spent most of the first half making Wellow look dangerous. They sat on the grass and awaited instruction from their manager Pete Lyons. Bryn Schwodler swigged from a water bottle. He'd been picked to play alongside Mark Reeves in the centre of midfield. “You might as well pull me off now,” he could be heard muttering. The second half didn't get much better. Wellow scored. Had it not been for Burridge goalkeeper Ryan Jones they would have done so much earlier.

(Pics by Roz Hutton) click on pics to enlarge, top: Ben Hutton and Kristian Hewitt line up a free kick. Bottom: Ben Hutton scores from the free kick.

Things didn't go as well for Wellow's goalkeeper. Law 12 of the game states that the opposition will be awarded an indirect free kick if a goalkeeper, inside his own penalty area, touches the ball again with his hands after he has released it from his possession and before it has touched another player.

Although technically, that law was broken, the ball had been out of the goalkeeper's grasp for no more than a second, having slightly fumbled it in mid air. Much of the referee's decision to award the free kick seemed to stem from Rich Allan's strong appeal for it. When Rich shouted he can't do that ref, the sound of the whistle quickly followed. Kristian Hewitt and Ben Hutton lined up the free kick. They spoke to each other in gestures while Wellow continued to moan at the referee. Hewitt moved the ball a few blades of grass to his right to Ben Hutton, who hammered it into the net.

The referee, perhaps knowing he'd made a mistake in giving Burridge a free kick, seemed keen to make another, in order to even things out between the two sides. Paul Dyke managed to prevent Sam Hewitt from chinning the referee by dragging him away by the scruff of the neck. Hewitt, along with everybody else wearing Burridge colours, hotly contested the referee's decision to penalise his tackle in the penalty area.

Wellow's number seven quickly appointed himself penalty taker. His white sleeves were pulled up above his elbows to reveal many hours spent in tattoo parlours. He placed the ball gently on the penalty spot. He'd not been as careful with his language during the course of the afternoon, having had much to say about Burridge, and none of it good. Now Burridge's Paul Dyke wanted the last word. Dyke said that the ball wasn't on the spot. He walked towards the ball and checked for himself. He did a thorough job. Wellow number seven's penalty kick wasn't worth the wait. It went straight. Ryan Jones slim legs stopped Wellow taking a 2-1 lead.

With his team's momentum lost, a Wellow midfielder decided that this was the right time to try a different tact. With the halfway-line being his chosen destination he tried to chop Ben Hutton, a sixteen stone man, in two. He had a good go, wrapping his studs somewhere around Hutton's knee. The referee pulled out his red card and sent him off. The Wellow midfielder ripped off his shirt and walked off the field in a tantrum. He began moaning about the referee to his manager. Hutton didn't retaliate. He said hitting a man with highlights in his hair is no better than hitting a girl.

Wellow were vulnerable. They'd cast themselves as the bad guys. Sam Schwodler burst through the middle late on in the game. He couldn't reach the ball, but managed to leave the goalkeeper in a heap on the floor. The ball fell kindly to Rich Allan. The Wellow defenders on the goal line didn't seem to distract him from scoring the winner.

-

BTC Reserves 0-2 Burridge

Wednesday 22nd April
BTC Sports Club, Stoneham Lane, Southampton

BTC's groundsman stormed straight toward the goal mouth where a group of Burridge players were kicking a ball around. With a crooked jabbing finger he pointed them in the direction of a sign hanging in front of the dressing rooms that asked players to stay out of the goal mouths. It was an instruction that BTC would later take far too literally. Satisfied that he'd got his message across, the groundsman walked away only to notice something laying on the grass, that to everybody else looked like a banana skin, but to the groundsman represented two fingers up to his profession.

"That wasn't there ten minutes ago." He stared. "Who does it belong to?" Paul Dyke was more interested in getting an energy boost from a quick snack than wanting to start a fist fight with a man with quick access to garden tools. He scooped the yellow skin up in his hands and walked back to the away team dressing rooms. The groundsman followed, walking past a group of BTC players who'd still yet to get changed, confessing to them that he hadn't had a drink for three days. I wouldn't want to be the person responsible for leaving an empty bottle of Lucozade in the six yard box on the weekend should he have managed to stay dry that long.


Click on pics to enlarge. Top: Sam Schwodler has his studs checked by the referee. Below: Ben Hutton enjoys a quick snout.

The first half provided little by means of entertainment. Paul Dyke's voice is usually heard by all, but on this occasion it was having to compete with the nearby fast moving traffic of the M27. Burridge's main creative force during this period was Justin Newman. Unfortunately for Burridge he was only here as a spectator, and his offerings were solely concerned on finding new ways to make fun out of Lee Fielder, who having come dressed in a hat stolen from a pensioner's wardrobe, made Justin's task comparatively straightforward.

Mark Reeves had spent the first half stuck out alone on the other side of the pitch with a linesman's flag in his hand. There was twenty minutes left of play when he was brought on as substitute. Within ten seconds of his arrival Burridge had scored. His exchanging of two quick successive passes was the beginning of a move that ended in Kristian Hewitt hitting the ball under the BTC goalkeeper from the outskirts of the penalty area. BTC barely had time to argue about their lapse in concentration when Rich Allan added a second goal, which effectively ended the game for BTC.


Click on pictures to enlarge: Top: Bryn Schwodler relaxes. Below: the first half action

-

Netley Central 2-2 Burridge

Saturday 7th November
Station Road, Netley

(All pics by Roz H) Click on pic to enlarge. Jay Schwodler (red) maintains his concentration despite sharing his team's opinion that man in pink shirt (fourth from left) is in no position to give out stick.

Rich Allan wanted to know exactly what he'd done wrong. The referee said he'd no choice but to book him, without ever fully explaining why. Netley's centre half was far more forthcoming with an explanation. When the the ball squirmed loose from Netley's defence, Rich Allan was first to it, sending Netley's centre-half through the air like grit in a slingshot. “Fucking leg breaker, that was,” screamed the centre-half, seemingly unaware of the irony in the speed he got to his feet to stick his forehead into Rich's. Then some man in grey sweat pants, who looked like Rocky if he abandoned his training routine to go full time couch potato, decided he wanted to stick his face in Rich's too. Burridge retreated on a pitch where tufts of grass grew from the earthy soil like a moustache on the top lip of a teenage school boy.

Paul Dyke had bought his kit, but he wasn't fit to play. Nor was Marc Judd, but he had drugs. A handful of yellow capsules sat in the palm of his hand in the dressing room, before he chased them back like a shot of sambuca. “I'm going to get bollocksed on these tonight,” he smirked to himself. They looked like they'd been taken from a Kinder-Egg, rather than his friend's prescription for Chron's disease.

There hadn't been enough time for players to feel warm sweat trickle down their necks when Netley took the lead. Rich Allan took Bryn's flick on in his stride to equalise, but Netley found a way through to score an identical second goal some way before half-time. Burridge captain, Kristian Hewitt, didn't make it that far. The dull pain in his back caused a grimace that stretched tightly across his bearded jowls. He trudged off the pitch towards his pregnant wife, who was wrapped up in a woolly hat, and was replaced by Jay Schwodler.

Ben Hutton had almost dislodged the goalposts from their moorings from a free kick during the second half, but the score remained 2-1 with fifteen minutes left to play. Tempers were starting to run thin. Not least Paul Dyke's. He was running the line. When the referee blew up against Justin Newman, Dyke snapped; asking what fucking difference there was from an unpunished challenge by Netley seconds earlier. He put strong emphasis in the word, 'fucking.'

Up to this stage, Jay's most memorable contribution to the game was a tackle so mistimed it was a bit like coming in with Brian May's guitar solo when Freddie Mercury's still going on in a hushed voice about putting a gun against somebody's head and pulling a trigger 'til he's dead. Then Justin Newman swung a corner kick within tantalising grasp of Netley's goalkeeper, who at times looked incapable of catching the ball. He hesitated. Jay Schwodler didn't, using his head to score.

Click on pic to enlarge. Jay Schwodler (in front of blue number two) heads in his goal.

Burridge played in a 3-4-3 formation:

GK: Ryan Jones
DF: Ben Hutton (Marc Judd)
DF: Sam Hewitt
DF: Kev Willsher
LM: Mark Emerson Sanderson
CM: Justin Newman
CM: Mark Reeves
RM: Kristian Hewitt (Jay Schwodler)
CF: Sam Schwodler
CF: Rich Allan
CF: Bryn Schwodler

Other results:

AFC Hilyingbury 7-1 Michelmersh
AFC Redbridge 4-1 Durley
Hythe Aztecs 4-2 Wellow
Sholing Sports 3 BTC Southampton

Next week: home to London Airways

Burridge 4-3 Sway (After extra time

Date: Saturday 5th September
Competition: Hampshire Intermediate Cup first round

Sway had taken the wrong junction off the M27. I know because the man next to me in the ever so close other urinal in the Burridge toilets told me. 'Had the directions all put into me Tom-tom,' he said, before continuing with the second and presumably more telling part of his anecdote that I was unable to give my attention to, being somewhat pre-occupied with the splash back of his rapid slashing that sprayed gently onto my hands. There is not, as far as I'm aware, a law that forbids a man from dying their hair blond after a certain age, but if the House of Lords were to pass one tomorrow, this was a man faced with a vigilante future. If of course he wasn't prepared to get his hair cut.

(All pics by Roz H) Chinese Monkey Allan hovers above the ground. Click on all pics to enlarge.

Today Burridge play in the first round of the Hampshire Intermediate Cup against Sway from the New Forest. There is a school of thought amongst some players that says you cannot tell the quality of the opposition by simply looking them up and down before the game. While that's mostly true, it doesn't stop some from carrying out pre-game analysis of the opposition, in the vain hope of gaining some valuable insight into their footballing ability.

This is never more so when teams from different leagues, who have never played each other before, come head to head. No detail is too slight to be bought back to football, from the sports bag the opposition carry out the car, to the manner in which it's carried, to the gait of walk. As a very basic example: anyone walking with legs splayed like they've a big set of knackers clinging-clanging together like a set of cannon balls is obviously the man for the big occasion. Such analysis is generally, a complete waste of time, but that's not to say it's the premise of the weak minded. Former Burridge centre forward Barry Smith was a long term advocate of such behaviour and he wasn't some nut. I've lost touch with him since he left to join the army because he was bored of working in customer services.

Sam Hewitt enjoys a private moment in public.

Ben Rowe and Justin Newman, January and February 2010 calendar shots respectively.

The referee waited at the main door of the changing rooms to inspect the sole of everybody's boots, not to check if anyone's taped a wrap of speed to the sole of their boot, but in case anybody's studs are unsuitably sharp. Having been through this process countless times I'm still waiting for a referee to say something like, 'Play in those, son? Not on my watch you're not.' They just have a quick look and nod. Both teams were queued up next to each other in the changing room corridor like they do on the telly. I may have spoilt the reflective mood by humming a high pitch blast of the Champions League theme. The first half's a bit like an Hollywood blockbuster starring Nicholas Cage, quite a lot of action but nothing really resembling a cohesive plot. The rest of the game follows on like sequels to it.

Proof that red socks and jeans can work if you want it to.

1-0 Rich 'Chinese Monkey' Allan waits patiently to head in after Greg Baker's shot had launched into the sky off the crossbar. I find myself ignoring the celebrations in favour of pointing my index finger repeatedly to my temple and insisting everybody concentrates. I don't know why.

1-1 Sway tap in a left wing cross. We all stare at the grass and look moody.

2-1 Sway's goalkeeper handles a back pass from his defender, which as we all know is against the rules, then throws a hissy fit when the referee awards Burridge an indirect free kick. Kristian Hewitt touches it to Ben Hutton and whizz bang it's in the back of the net.

2-2 Sway again cut in from left for 2-2. More moody looks at the grass.

2-3 Sway score on the counter attack after quickly clearing a Burridge free kick. Their tails are up. Burridge look spent.

3-3 Justin Newman crosses to Kristian Hewitt to take the game into thirty minutes of extra time.

4-3 What's this? Ben Hutton up for a corner? Check. Paul Dyke incognito on back post in red hair scores the winner? Check. Their goalkeeper throws another hissy fit and lashes out at the nearest thing which just so happens to be a bin. He sends it flying with a good boot. The referee sends him off, so some poor git has to replace him and put on his sweaty gear.

Keep looking above and you'll see Paul Dyke (furthest left in red hair) escape tight marking and score from Ben Hutton's knock down.

(Above) Sway's goalkeeper shows total disregard for tanning solariums whilst on hunger strike.

Pete Lyons in instant pain after picking up jellyfish

Burridge go into the hat for the second round all keeping their fingers crossed for an away day on the Isle of Wight.