Two on the Bounce

Last night's victory was hopefully the continuation of a winning streak that we can build on until the years end.

In what was a highly entertaining match, played in a marvellous spirit, there were chances for both sides and a 2-1 win for the Accies could have been many different scorelines. After having a couple of blips in otherwise good performances, Lee Clifford between the sticks was outstanding. He set the tone for his performance with a stunning save in the first five minutes and grew in confidence throughout.

Yet again praise to Mes who has dropped back into centre half and gives us a more dynamic look with his tackling, communication and distribution, week after week he has been putting in solid performances in a demanding position and the way he organises the defence is reaping rewards.

Great first goal from Paul, who was a menace to the oppo throughout, was just one of chances created but CP&DSV had a good keeper of theor own and his performance was rewarded with them getting back into the game in the second half. Not to be outdone the Accies raised their game and a great diving header from Thorney (within his comfort zone 1-5yards) put the Accies back in front and thats the way it stayed.

Not our best performance of recent weeks but our determination and resilience stood us in good stead and hopefully will for weeks to come.

Up the Accies

Homage to Cantoria: A Travelogue of the Accies in Spain

2.30am Alarm rings, minutes later, a minicab pulls up. Off we go to Tooting. Drunk girl in Tulse Hill lying across litter bin. Nice start to the day.
3.15am Cold morning, Luis and I bundle into friend’s car off to Gatwick at rendez-vous point.
circa 4.00am, arrive at airport, meet up with the Dades, Luke, the Rudd family, and Anthony. Slurps in the Wetherspoons, they’d been up all night.
6am Take off, strange smells coming from one of the Dades.
Hoorah! Almeria, warm and sunny.
10am Met by Ian ‘the Gaffer’ and hire car rep. Luis talking Spanish in full flow.

Climbing the mountains, past the Spaghetti Western film sets, greeted by a waving cowboy, empty wood front towns and wigwams in the valley. No signs of any Injuns.


Luis driving the hire car


The barren mountain landscape


A waving cowboy at the Spaghetti Western film set

12noon Arrival at our B&B: the Barrio, Cantoria. Our Walsall hosts make us feel welcome then a leisurely stroll around the mountain village to loosen our muscles for tomorrow’s games.

12.10 Hit the bars. Shandy’s seems like a good place to start.
…
…


Luis displaying his trophy napkin


Watching the local talent


Local dolly bird, goldfinch


Deep thought...An eventful evening: Killer Pool, cash Euros changing hands, some great tapas, several local wind-up merchants, a story about a local dog, we head off for an early night...

Saturday
9.30 Full fry up in El Barrio followed by team talk. Ah, sounds like when Liverpool won the European cup in Israel in the late 1970s.
11.20 Head off to the neighbouring village to the sports ground.
11.42 Warm up and pitch inspection. Its warm and sunny, the pitch is erratic. The teams arrive.

12.15 Shite. We get the worst draw. We play the first two games of the tournament back to back. Its getting hotter. 8-a-side. We recruit Carlos, a left-back from Ecuador.

12.30 Kick off: Accies v Ex-pats. Anthony in goal, Luke centre-back, Carlos left back, Andy Dade right back, Luis right wing, myself left wing, Dave centre mid and the Gaffer forward. Stuart shouting encouragement and instructions from the touch line.

0-1 After several great saves, another aerial challenge sees the first goal of the day squirm past Anthony.

[Its getting hotter and the pace of the game is making my breakfast come back.]

1-1 WOW! Fantastic opportunist goal by the Gaffer. The ball breaks lose and Ian takes the ball first time and lobs the keeper.

Result: 1-1. A hard fought draw, but deserved.

15 minutes rest. We are all exhausted playing 40 minutes at full pace. Next up, the local Spanish side.

1-0 Brilliant goal. Quick move and the Gaffer buries the ball in the back of the net as he runs at the Spanish defence.
[It’s getting hotter still and we are all slowing.]
The Spanish team are physical and well organised, playing the ball through the middle of the park. Then they equalise, threading the ball through the centre.
1-1
We re-convene for second half and they are attacking our goal again. The Gaffer limps off with calf injury, Werewolf moves into forward position and Stuart goes in goal. Anthony moves into midfield.

1-2 They score a second. Then great block by Stuart to deny third but collides with the brave Fallon. Luke taken off injured. Down to 7 men. One of the ex-pat team joins us. 1-3. Another neat goal through the centre.
Result: 1-3. We lacked subs.

The final match between the Spanish and ex-pat team ends 2-2, with a cameo role for Dave Rudd in the ex-pat team. Local Spanish team win the cup.

Good celebrations as we drink beer and eat wonderful tapas in the sports bar provided by the generous Spanish team. Then reconvene in the Casino bar in Cantoria for more drinks and a curry [superb], then a night on the town. Pub crawl of the local establishments until we drive back down the mountain.
Arrive at airport at 8am [thanks to Luis], for flight back to Gatwick.





A brilliant few days in the sunny mountains, good food and drink, and some great football, not to be forgotten. Thanks Ian and the Lads in Spain!

Almeria 2010: Best Caption Award

Accies centre back Luke Fallon in deep conversation with bar dog. Best captions in replies please.

This picture says more than a thousand-word blog, which is handy because it's a lot quicker too…

(Besides, I signed up world travel expert Werewolf to write a traveblogue of the trip!)

Accies Spain Trip 2010

Well, what a fantastic weekend.

Great location, great host (thank-you Ian "The Gaffer" Holmes!), great football, great tapas, great bars, great company.

Can't wait for next year when we can bring home the "Trofeo Amistoso"!

No doubt more detail to follow on here soon...

Pixie Football

If you want to know what at least six Accies players used to do to get their competitive football fix before we had the Accies, click here (you need to be on Facebook to view it I think). Strange as it may seem, Olympic Soccer on the PlayStation, followed by two or three successors, are in my mind a part of Accies history, in that they're what I did before I had the opportunity to play real football. Shortly after Effra was formed, the PlayStation went into the loft, never to be seen again. Why would I want to play Pixie Football (football starring pixellated players…!) when I could play the real thing?

Extra-CurrAccular Activity

On Monday night a smattering of Accies made their way to the True Theatre Of Dreams at Palace to help out two other teams in what turned out to be a thoroughly entertaining 11-a-side match. Southside FC, managed by our own Phil Caldwell and starring Neill Robertshaw in goal, took on Longmead Tuesday, a Tonbridge-based team "managed" by yours truly. Longmead were helped out by Dave Rudd in goal plus both Luke Fallon and Andy Thornes, who played stints at centre back, and Tremayne, who had a spell at left-back and some time up front. Another familiar face starred for Southside: 1860 Lambeth gaffer Mark Davies.

The match was one of the closest I've ever witnessed at Palace, much to the delight of the Tonbridge Massive, who had feared a drubbing. Two of Longmead's players had last seen 11-a-side action back in 2008, playing for Dads Army against the Accies and suffering a demoralising 8-0 defeat. Fortunately there was no repeat pasting – in fact, possibly thanks to the absence of several key Southside players, the teams were very evenly matched.

Time constraints prevent me from producing a lengthy match report, but here are some choice recollections: both keepers played absolute blinders, the match would've been high-scoring if it hadn't been for them; it was 0-0 at half-time and both myself and Elbows delivered rousing half-time team talks/rambled on amid a cacophony of voices and contributed nothing of any use (delete as applicable). Southside had the better of the 2nd half pressure and chances but failed to put the sausage in the sausage roll. Longmead's burly forward Paul Humbles, who was so late on the night and so incapable of finding the pitch that he came very close to driving home in a huff, provided a superb through ball with 10 or 15 mins left, putting fellow striker Simon Don't-Even-Know-His-Surname-And-I've-Been-Playing-5-A-Side-With-Him-For-The-Best-Part-Of-2-Years in on goal. Simon's finish was emphatic and Southside couldn't respond in kind.

Longmead Tuesday triumphed 1-0 and the lads refused to agree with my opinion that a draw would've been a fair result. The team seem bang up for a return to the True Theatre Of Dreams and I've pencilled in 25 November for the Tonbridge fellas to play the Accies. If I'm fit I'll line up for Longmead, but that's a pretty big 'if' and frankly on the strength of their performance against Southside they don't need me anyway! Should be a great night if it comes off and with the Accies' annual awards bash the following night, a great couple of nights!

Last week's game… and an apology

Another post on behalf of Thorny:

Excellent to finally get a glimpse of the kind of football I know we are capable of. Lots of great performances all over the pitch and some passages of play that were up there with the best I have ever seen the Accies play. Still lots of room for improvement though. We did give away two sloppy goals towards the end, mainly I think, through a sense of complacency. I also believe we can sustain the passing side of our game for the full 90 minutes, which, hard though it is, should certainly be one of our aims in the run up to Christmas. The talking on the pitch can still be improved too, although I do feel we are moving in the right direction on that issue.

I do need to make an apology to the team for something in last week's game. In line with our fair-play policy, most certainly Joe and possibly myself should have been immediately substiuted during an incident in the second half. I will do my best to make sure this doesn't happen again, although, in Joe's defence in particular, the were extenuating circumstances (one, being the tackle was lined up undoubtedly with malice, and two, it was fraction of a second away from snapping his leg in two!). Anyway, apologies for any lack of consistency - I will do my utmost to make sure it doesn't happen again.

As for this week's game, they are a team we have played a few times before, with mixed results. They are a team we can beat, particularly if we play with the confidence of last week. Hopefully it has given us the chance to finally get some momentum going and put in a string of good performances (assuming Stu doesn't have us down to play Zidane's All- Stars in the next few weeks!), so let's look to lift our performance level by imposing our game on the opposition from the first whistle - that's quick short passes into feet, lots of movement off the ball and plenty of communication, in case any of you were wondering! Looking forward to seeing everybody fit and focused on Thursday.

Up The Accies!

Last Week… and some selection issues

Another post on behalf of Thorny:

Last week's game resulted in a rather depressing 8-0 hammering! There were very few positives from the game, apart from the fact that we got a healthy dose of physical exercise chasing a ball around! Actually, joking aside, there was no shame in last week's result. We fielded, to my knowledge, at least five players well into their forties (apologies to anyone if I have this wrong), several players knocking on the door of 40, and, again apologies if i am wrong, only two, possibly three players who can seriously claim to be still at their physical peak. Against a team that were not only technically far better than us, but also, pretty much to a man, in their mid/late twenties, the result was hardly surprising. All this highlighted to me was the need for us to be more discerning in selecting our oppostion, which I am sure we will be in future. That said, we were still almost silent again, which I found to be the only truly disappointing thing about Thursday. In a roundabout way this brings me to another issue.

In the pub on Thursday, and afterwards by text, a number of players aired the view that selection should not be based on the 15-man, equal-time rotation policy that I have been employing, but rather, on picking our strongest team, with substitutions brought on as an when appropriate ie they want the team to be selected in the same way that a Saturday or Sunday league team is picked. As promised, I have spent the weekend reflecting on this issue.

The first response of most Accies reading this will no doubt be the mantra of 'form, fitness, talent and commitment'. To me, this is, and has always been, a bit of a red-herring as far as selection is concerned. Since I have been with the club the only person to implement this policy strictly was Simon and, at least to my recollection, it proved to be highly unpopular. When I took over picking the team from Joe a few months ago I at no point planned to use FFTC, even though we all agreed to it at our last AGM. The reason was simple: if I did, some players would hardly be getting any football, and others would be playing all the time. The Accies is a club of widely divergent talents and abiltities. Some obviously see this as in sometimes understandably negative light ie after 8-0 dubbings!!! I have grown, reluctantly at first, to see it as one of the positive things about playing for the Accies.

Hence I have tried, much in the same way that Joe did, to make everybody who turns up for the Accies feel important to the team, and therefore give everybody the chance to contribute. This has meant that I have used this strict rotation policy, with everybody getting approximately equal minutes on the pitch. It should be stressed I have done this not just because i believe in some kind of broadly democratic principle, but because there is a deeper philosophy, based on a fundamental sense of team-spirit, behind it. Put very prosaically it's part of an effort to make us a better team, but a better team based not just on a handful of individuals playing well, but on all of us playing well together and supporting each other. As Steve said to me during last week's game, "your mistake is my mistake, mate" (in fact he says that to me most weeks in an effort to keep my spirits up after my latest misplaced pass!). This, in a nutshell, is exactly my point. Thus, it shouldn't matter if people are coming on and off fairly frequently. We are a team of 15, 18, 20 people who can all do a job for the team, playing football in a way that we enjoy, and will hopefully, in time, become more successful than not. This is the reason I have made such an issue of communication rather than focusing on tactics or technical stuff.

All that being said, I consider this to be an open debate and would greatly appreciate all club members' views on this issue. My email is anaxagoras484@yahoo.com, so feel free to drop me a line, or I'm happy to chat about this after games in the pub. In the meantime, and until I get a considerable portion of the Accies demanding I change my selection policy, I'm going to continue with the ideas as I have briefly explained above. Let's bear in mind though, whatever system we use, we are going to get beaten sometimes, maybe even frequently. The trick is, I think, to win and lose as a team and, just as importantly, to play football in an environment that we can all enjoy. For myself I can only say that there is nobody in the Accies I don't look forward to seeing come Thursday evening.

As for this week's game, it's looking like we are going to be oversubscribed with players again. Some of us will therefore have to miss out. I will do my best to let those whose turn it is know beforehand, although that still means we would like you to turn up to the game (see above). If you do miss out, be assured, you will get plenty of chances to play before the end of the year. If you are in the 15 let's try to forget about last week, show a bit of determination and start to play some good football again. I thought the week before we showed signs that just round the corner are a string of excellent performances, which will hopefully be accompanied by similarly excellent results.