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THE EQUALIZER STRIKES AGAIN

In true hair tearing, nail biting spirit Sporting Club Kiosk managed to relinquish a glorious 38th minute lead in favour of their prefered 3-1 arse kicking followed by up hill over complex clawing back of a draw.

The boys from the common are never comfortable to be winning and despite ever increasing
self belief still need the re-assuring sting of potential defeat to raise their game.

If only the prospect of winning easily was a enough for these boys then the growing crowds of willing supporters could see their team romp home gloriously to a hard won victory.

However despite swapping a combined travelling army of one consulting mother and two small infants in Morden for a small army of Cambridge graduated middle class girls at Clapham it was not enough to spur the team to victory.

The first goal came after a first half where the South Side Diamonds were definately in the ascendency. Their busy strikers were running rings around an initially disorganised and worried Kiosk side. A couple of good strikes were parried off the line by Kiosks acrobatic Argentine goalkeeper who would be compared favourably to Gordon Banks if the two countries had not got so little in common.

Then just as it looked like the old timers could get a real beating, an inch perfect pass through from the left of midfield was converted by the goal hungry Mr Mills VIP and Sporking CK were miraculously 1 up.

Before the middle class crowd had time to decide whether tiddlywinks was a half blue or quarter the score was levelled by what can only be described as an equalising goal!

Nothing had prepared this crowd for the reality which was that Sporting Club Kiosk could hold a lead only in the same manner that Oliver Reed can hold a drink.

The inevitable then happened. Kiosk went into the half time oranges pleased but annoyed. A pep talk from the player/coach Richardson was laced with Cockney Rhyming slang and served only to confuse an already very confused team.

The crowd were quietly confident that the greater experience of Kiosk which included men that had soundly beaten the Design Studio and a couple of lesser known media buying agency cleaners would tell. It did.., within 10 minutes a couple of substitutions followed and a couple of further goals were conceeded. Kiosk were 3-1 down and looked dead and buried.

Fortunately South Park Grammar School had not counted on the mammoth weight of Paul Sweeney or the weaving dodging flightyness of John Roscoe. Between these two queens of the football pitch a ball found its way into the net twice more in the game and both times it was at the South Ladies preparatory school end.

The crowd cheered as tiffin was served and the glory of the away from home kiosk boys was once again secured. Certainly a tarnished war weary kind of glory.

Infact if beating small boys who are out for a quiet Sunday morning kick about with their dads can be classed as victory, then this was it. Except it was a draw.

What can be learned ? Little that we didn't already know. Sure Mills can score when he gets those telling through balls. But where are they for 90% of the game ? Sure Sweeney can be relied upon to score within the final few seconds of a football game, in a nearly religious and spooky way, but why not before ? Sure Haden and Shore can run about and occasionally turn on the magic that saw GQ magazine really struggle to guarantee the obvious draw. Sure the defense are big, often Scottish and Italian and carefully level the oppostion pre-school tots with killer blows.

Can this team win promotion with such an ecletcic style of play and a near obsessional desire to throw away the lead. No probably.

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