Countdown to the 10th anniversary event #1: it's 10 months today

Welcome to the first in a series of 10 posts that will, unless it all goes bent and wobbly, appear on this site on the 17th of each month for, well, the next 10 months. Effra Academicals celebrate our 10th birthday in October 2009 and there will be a major event on Saturday 17 October 2009 to mark a decade of red'n'blue action. The festivities are now 10 months away, there will have been 10 years of Accies action by then, so each of those years will be marked on the blog.

Part 1: 1999-2000

It all began in a pub, naturally. There was a false start - earlier in '99, Ian Holmes, the man who was to become known for ever more as The Gaffer, suggested forming a 5-a-side squad and entering a league. It didn't happen that time, but it happened a few months later. At a quiz night in what was then known as the Half & Half on Streatham High Road and is now, sadly, a boarded-up ex-Jack Stamps, Ian asked myself and Luke if we fancied forming a team. Our only recent experience of footy was on the PlayStation (so-called Pixie Football), so we leapt at the chance. A few phone calls later, and Oscar, Chris, Gza and my brother Andy were immediately on board. Shortly after, the first ever Accies squad was completed - the aforementioned blokes were joined by Mick, Luis, Joe and Macca. I think there were 11 of us, crikey I hope I haven't forgotten anyone...

Naming the team was easy, as I recall - nearly all of us lived in sunny south London at the time so we wanted something that wasn't specific to Brixton, Streatham etc, but referenced the area in some way. Effra is an underground river that runs under Brixton, towards Streatham, ish. The second part of the name is after Hamilton Academical (we added the 's' by mistake and this still annoys me to this day). There was precedent for using Scottish team names: Luke, Oscar and I played park kickabout footy for Haddon Street Thistle in Middlesbrough.

Our 5-a-side exploits got off to a typically stuttering start - we were enthusiastic and some of us had talent in abundance, but we lacked any tactical nous whatsoever! Our very first game was against Woodley Wanderers, who later became Dolphin Riders and are still regular 11-a-side opponents. We lost 2-1 and our goal, perhaps fittingly was an own goal... Our second game saw us pick up our first ever point, Gza scoring in a 1-1 draw with Palace All Stars - just as well, because we lost our next 14 games in a row, most memorably losing 2-3 to Woodley in a game we had led 2-0 with less than 2 minutes to go! But on 11 November 1999 the Accies won our first ever game, trouncing Palace Cowboys 3-0. I actually missed both of those games, as I was on holiday on New Zealand with Ruth, but Hotmail emails from Oscar ensured that I commiserated the 2-3 and celebrated the 3-0 on the other side of the world! Final stats for that season were won 2, drew 2, lost 26; for 17, against 77. Gza got 6 goals, Mick scored 5, The Gaffer bagged 3, Andy got 2 and there was that own goal.

After that, in Spring 2000 and Summer 2000 we made slow but steady progress. I just found a document on my work computer entitled 'Accies email digest', which appears to be an absolute treasure trove of emails from early 2000 onwards. There's simply too much to trawl through in an attempt to include anything here, so I'll save all that for another blog post or series of blog posts! (Apart from anything else, I'm not sure how to copy and paste text from elsewhere into a blog entry, so it might entail typing stuff out from scratch!?!) But here's something from the first email I saved, dated January 2000, from The Gaffer: "It's that time again. February 3 2000 sees the start of Effra's second foray into the Elms 5-a-side League. Joe, I hope the injury has cleared up* and you will be able to join us for more of the season this time... I was in the bar at the Centre last night and the little Joe Pesci referee** was there and said that he hoped we would be back for the new season as he hadn't experienced anything quite like our victory celebrations for a long time. I think it was a compliment!"

Other 5-a-side action worth a mention includes 24 February 2000, when Oscar scored his first ever goal and promptly got 2 more in another 3-0 win over Palace Cowboys, who I distinctly recall were drunk that night - good lads. Anyway, Oscar wasn't complaining and our first ever hat-trick was scored. And on 16 March 2000, we beat our bitter rivals Surrey Envelopes (whose ranks included "Fat Gazza") 2-1 from 1-0 down, with The Gaffer equalising and Oscar getting the winner. If I had to name my favourite ever 5-a-side game, this would be it. Ask me over a pint some time and I'll talk you through it. Bloody brilliant, it was.

We also played one 11-a-side match in our first year, a 10-1 thrashing at the hands of Friends XI, who had never ever met each other before. Gza scored our consolation goal!

This post doesn't even scratch the surface of memories from our first 12 months. I urge anyone who was there back then to add their Comments to this post or, better still, post memories of your own. See you again in a month's time to relive Oct 2000 to Oct 2001...

*The knee injury had cleared up, with the aid of horse tranquilisers or summat, and Joe became a regular attendee.
**We now know him as Graham Stefford. He even played 11-a-side for us once!