match report 22 January 2009

An interesting, if ultimately one-sided contest tonight.

It was 7v7, and after 20 minutes there was all to play for with the score at 7-5 to the coloured tops.

Post mortems are still being energetically pursued round the streets of Camden in an effort to explain how the white tops caved so dramatically and the coloured tops eased ahead so effortlessly.

The final score is a mere academic emblem of the domination of the coloured tops and your match analyst lost count as the goals kept flying in but believes it ended up at 14-8.

The white tops were not short of skill: Andrew, Yusuf, Joel and Juan all had their moments with creative dribbles, and scorching runs; whilst nobody reads a game quite like Graeme, who was a steadying influence throughout, and Martin proved effective in defence and attack with strong tackles and quality balls.

But it wasn't enough. The coloured tops were sheer class. Luke valiantly played in spite of an injury and worked selflessly for his side, the Pritchard brothers maintained a fine balance between effective defensive cover and quality forward movement, Jason, all the way from Australia, showed the technique of Harry Kewell coupled with the eye for goal of Mark Viduka and the positional sense of Tim Cahill, whilst newcomer Tom had an eager eye for goal and a confidence befitting a true winner. All these factors, coupled with the highly rated Dwayne and Merrick who totally dominated the park with their thrusting central runs, attacking of open spaces and clever one-twos. It was reminiscent of Gerrard and Torres at their best.

With so many great performances, it is an unenviable task to decide on a man-of-the-match and so we retired to the pub and asked an objective observer from South Shields his view, and he had no hesitation in choosing Merrick - and we have to say we agree.

Great game everyone.