Captain Mike was away so his role fell to Freddy. Team selection in the dressing room was fraught with an ever changing line-up which unexpectedly now included Mike who had made it back in Brussels. Eventually, we ended up with ; Steve Mazza in goal : back 4 -Peter Brown, Darren James, Chris Riley, Alex Knott : mid field -Brian Lewis, Freddy Dehombreux, Paady Rosen, George Boyadjiev : upfront -Hughie Gallagher and Kenny Francey ; bench Chris Ffinch, Dermot Gallagher and Mike Gutierrez. The team talk was about keeping things tight at the start as they were a 'form' team who scored a lot of goals....

After the opening 10 minutes, during which the only time the forwards touched the ball, was to kick-off after they scored, we suddenly came on song. Passes were strung together, with Brian proving very dangerous on the right wing, their attacks were being broken up by Freddy and Paddy, the ball was being played out of defense by Pete and Alex, linking well with George while Darren and Chris (who later made it through a tight vote to become MoM) were now confidently stopping anything else that made it through to them. Mazza also had the more pleasant experience of not picking the ball out of the net when he had a touch.

For the next 20 minutes we were clearly on top with the play building nicely up to Hugh and Kenny. A header then a shot, both just wide, were just reward for our clever plays. A goal before half-time was coming and would put us firmly back in the match ...... .....We completely failed to pick their forward from a throw-in (he was standing in a circle of 4 of our players), he turned ands beat a couple of players before getting into the box and firing in a low drive. Mazza got 'good hands' on it, but it agonizingly squirmed under his body to give them an underserved 3 nil lead at the break.

Despite the large deficit we remained confident that we could get something from the match especially with the strength of our bench. Chris and Dermot came on to continue the '20 minute' spell (later bolstered by Mike) but we failed to really get any quality balls into the box which is what it all comes down to.

We continued to huff and puff looking for any kind of opening as they continued to play pretty football. This mainly involved trying to pass all the way from defence into attack which, to be fair, should have lead to at least another goal for them. Our biggest highlight in the second half was Kenny, for the second week in a row, going to ground injured. This week it was a cut to his forehead sustained when jumping for a ball on the edge of the box.

And finally...the referee was something beyond even your worst ABBA experience. Both teams took it on themselves to 'self-referee' by kicking the ball out of play when he failed to get the most basic decisions correct. The worst was when Kenny was through but was given off-side because of some verbals between one of their players and Freddy had kept on going. Their keeper deliberately kicked it out to give the ball back to us...... It's a funny old game....