Jokers 3 – 1 Perfidious Albion

Sunday 2 April 2006

Market Road, k.o. 4.00 p.m.

Team: Linter; Lynes, Vere, Gromb, Read; Milner, Hyde, Gamson, Perez-Tejedor; Stevens, Wilby.

Subs: Seaton-Smith (on for Perez-Tejedor, 60), Mandolini (on for Stevens, 60).

Scorers: Gamson, Wilby, Read.

The Jokers secured an immediate return to the top flight by beating lowly Albion, meaning that, whatever the result of Thursday’s match between Cambozola and Elbow Rooms, they can no longer be caught by the third placed team. Indeed, with a little more luck and composure in front of goal, they could have produced a result which would have put pressure on league leaders Elbow Rooms. As it is, it would take a freak result to see the Jokers go up as champions.

Despite the relatively close nature of the scoreline and the levelling factor of a strong wind blowing directly down the pitch throughout the match, this was a comfortable win. In addition to their three goals, the Jokers hit the woodwork three times and went near on countless others, while Perfidious attacks were sporadic and their goal the result of an individual error.

With the stiff breeze, Jokers were pegged back in their own half for much of the first period, but most of Albion’s attacks broke down as the ball blew through to Linter. The Jokers were battling the conditions as much as the opposition, but had still produced the best chances of the half before Gamson opened the scoring with about ten minutes left, Stevens hit a high, swirling ball into the area, which Albion attempted to clear twice before it fell to Gamson’s feet. Showing the sort of composure that the game was crying out for, he took a couple of touches before finishing low across the keeper from twelve yards. Almost immediately, the Jokers had a golden chance to double their lead when Stevens found himself inside the box with only the keeper to beat. He too took a touch, but saw his side-foot effort from eight yards hit the inside of the post and rebound to safety.

The second period was played almost entirely in the Albion half, with Linter claiming to have touched the ball only four times. Stevens looked set to score, but blazed high and wide. A Lynes free kick struck the crossbar (which has returned to having a dip in the middle of it) and rebounded to hit the back of the goalkeeper’s head, miraculously managing to clear the bar. Even more miraculously, the referee awarded a goalkick. Hyde then struck the angle of post and bar with a header. Then, with the Jokers struggling to make their pressure count, disaster struck. With Seaton-Smith having been introduced for the excellent Perez-Tejedor and the luckless Stevens having been withdrawn in favour of Mandolini, the Jokers found themselves without substitutes when Gamson crumpled under a lunging challenge in the box. With the game still only at 1-0, the Jokers were now reduced to ten men for the final twenty minutes of a game they needed to win to guarantee promotion. But it is an old football cliché that ten men are sometimes harder to play against than eleven and so it proved, as the Jokers almost immediately found the second they had been threatening for so long. A rare cohesive team move was started by Milner, who collected Seaton-Smith’s return pass and took it down the left, crossing for Wilby to complete with a rare right-foot finish that should cement him at the top of the league scorers’ chart with twenty-five goals.

Perfidious were handed a route back into the match when Vere, caught in two minds by the conditions, was slow to clear his lines, allowing the number seven to catch him in possession and loft a shot over a stranded Linter. But the Jokers soon found a third goal when a Hyde pass found Read, who struck a beautiful left-foot half-volley into the net, to make the final score identical to the result of the first match against Perfidious back in October.

Despite the promotion, the season ends on a somewhat anti-climatic note, since only two matches ago it offered the possibility of going a season unbeaten and securing the championship. The first of those has obviously now gone and, with only a two-goal margin of victory, in all probability so has the second (Cambozola would need a four-goal win over the Elbow Rooms to hand the Jokers the title on goal-difference). But this shouldn’t overshadow what has been an excellent season: Promotion secured; a sixteen-match league unbeaten run that stretched back to the final days of last season; the league’s top scorer in Wilby; the meanest defence in the league; a double against the Elbow Rooms; clean sheets; hitting nine against Green Oak; plus the knowledge that we shouldn’t have to play ESB during the next campaign.