Game 55

:wave: for Sandy who complained about my use of the proper terms for a penno in the last match report. You are now Sandy and will remain so until someone else kicks something up and it lands in your mouth ;-)

P.S. Please can I borrow your flags for Sunday ... those nice electronic ones?

Less of this and on to tonight's game, the first midweek fixture at the business end of the season. This was my one and only game with nothing riding on it between now and the end of the season. You wouldn't have thought so as both teams put every ounce of effort into striving for a goal.

The away team arrived a little late however we got away pretty close to the allotted kick off time. I had spoken to both captains and advised them that we should reduce the playing time to 2 halves of 35 minutes as it was likely to get dark - oh how true it was.

This was an up and back game with the away team happy to launch kicks from the goalkeepers hands and goal kicks into the opposition penalty area and hope that chaos ensued. The home team stood resolute and launched counter attack after counter attack. Neither team really had the upper hand and little battles were going on all over the field.

One of the away midfielders attracted my attention as he had 2 fouls in 2 minutes and a third a few minutes later. I explained to him that he was getting persistent and in danger of collecting a caution. He calmed down for all of 10 minutes around half time but then made a bad challenge, almost enough for a caution on its own. He still demanded that I penalise the opponent he fouled because of his exclamation of pain/anger which included a couple of naughty words. We soon agreed to disagree!

A few minutes later his captain said something out of turn and collected the game's second and last caution. The home assistant referee offered his opinion once too often and had to be relieved of his duties and all the time the away team were bombing the home team penalty area and the home team were sneaking the ball out on counter attacks. It became monotonous but at least I did plenty of running! I'm shattered now as this stupid virus which has robbed me of a lot of my energy seems to be worsening. I still have a busy weekend to look forward to though with the first of this season's semi-final middles.

We finished at 0-0, calories burned 1076, hr max 92% and an average of 80%