There's nothing like a good bang to set you up for football on a Sunday morning but it is normally preferred sans the huge plume of black smoke and a lack of windows and doors in the Hemel area. However, this is exactly how many of the team were woken from their sleep as the black gold at Buncefield oil depot engaged in a row with a spark which the spark clearly won. Despite the explosion not being heard in Essex, this week's scribe made it to the ground on time only to find our manager Trevor Hughes scratching his head. There had been a couple of drop outs in the week to add to the absence of Messrs Johnson, Ellerker, and Murphy. There was also no sign and no message from three of the intended subs, Juneka Junior, Foysol Ahmed and Flory Zinga but Chris Beeden was making his return appearance for the club. As they say at KFC, if there's no Zinga, give them Nugget !! Thankfully Terry Moore had made the effort to attend despite taking a knock for his Saturday team on the previous day which at least gave us a squad of twelve. But no ....... disaster struck as Tony Speller turned an ankle in the warm up and we were down to the bare eleven with no sign (as yet) of the three stooges Beeden (Tarby R), Copues and Rebairo, let alone Mrs Bester who was at home nursing Colin's flu (probably!). A 4-5-1 formation was opted for, with Conor McGovern ploughing the lone furrow up front, Steve Cokell dropping into the left midfield slot alongside myself (holding), Nick Vertigans, Nugget and Derek Dorward. Robin Pryke made a welcome return at right back and Stuart Dorward dropped back into the centre of defence alongside Andrew Warmerdam with Terry Moore completing the outfield line-up at left back. Simon Jackson was in goal again with Darryl Johnson still suffering from a groin strain.
Anyhow, the game got underway and it was evident that the early breakfast call had not helped our boys as Europa were sharp and physical and clearly more up for the game than us. We limited their attempts to long range efforts as they tried to gain the advantage but, following our previous two games, we were disappointed with the lack of chances that we actually created. In fact, we only managed two attempts on target in the half - the first falling to Conor which was struck straight into the keeper's arms and the second to Derek Doward (who temporarily shed his recent 'boots of lard' tag) where he expertly volleyed home with the outside of his right boot from a lobbed through ball, only to be (debatably) ruled off-side!! The only other incident of the half was the brave Terry Moore suffering at the hands of an air rifle sniper with the precision aim to find his butt from the grassy knoll ............. or maybe he just pulled his hamstring. I switched temporarily to the left back position while the re-enforcements were readied. Luckily, Ritchie Copues had turned up by now and was changed and ready to come on in Terry's place, just as soon as he had borrowed Terry's boots - NB. Not all of the preceeding sentence is entirely accurate ! Half time arrived and despite all our woes, we were still on level terms.
As what appeared to be 'Armageddon' closed in on Enfield Town in the form of a dark rolling smoke cloud, the second half got underway. The light was fading fast but the sun still managed to cast a shadow over goalkeeper, Simon Jackson, who had been faultless all game. Another long range (and hopeful) free-kick was floated into the area and somehow evaded Jacko's semaphore before dropping into the net. We battled straight back and as the little silhouettes of men (scaramouche, scaramouche!) danced around ahead of me, Nugget produced some 'golden' footwork going forward and drew a free-kick on the edge of the Europa area. He took the dead ball himself and hit a low drive to the bottom right-hand corner that the keeper got finger-tips to ... but not enough to prevent the equaliser. With twenty minutes to go the Titanic hit the iceberg when our illustrious skipper, Stuart Dorward, made an uncharacteristic mistake with a back-header from a through ball that left Jacko in no-mans land and allowed the Europa striker to finish neatly.
Drastic times require drastic measures so Stuart moved up into midfield and I dropped back to centre half as we went chasing the game. We managed one clear cut opportunity when I played the ball in towards Conor who nodded down neatly to Steve Cokell approaching the six yards box. Steve elected to wait for the ball to come down for a strike when the better option would have probably been to head home so the chance was lost. Soon after, Ritchie Copues second touch became a tackle - which the opposition won - and Europa charged down the wing in search of a third. The by-line was reached and the cross was finished with aplomb by the other Europa striker, leaving our ship sunk with no time to recover our position. We didn't deserve to lose this match and if you take away the errors, we wouldn't have. But then, if you take away the assassination, the Kennedy's had a lovely drive through Dallas in November'63.

Quality KFC gag Johnny!!! Still having a chortle!

Most amusing. If we carry on at this rate we'll have to have a footballers football writer of the year!