June 24th: Turtles 4(4) vs Waterside Karori 4(1)
Match Report by Donaldo

Joga Bonito, Turtle Style

‘Play Beautiful’, a swarthy and very French looking Eric Cantona tells us is the literal translation of Nike’s World Cup campaign called Joga Bonito. “It’s about making the game beautiful again… It involves honour, heart, joy, skill and team…”, says Eric on the official website. Apparently it’s also about exposing the cheats, shirt pullers, time wasters and scything tackles that take the beautiful ball players out of the game. I guess there must be something about selling sweat shop shoes in there too...

Is it just me that finds it a tad ironic to hear this plea for ‘the beautiful game’ from the man who launched a kung fu style kick at a Crystal Palace fan after being sent off at Old Trafford, and then at the post match press conference cryptically quipped "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea". WTF??? With that sort of PR genius you can only wonder how many magnums of Bolli had been quaffed when Nike’s PR geniuses chose Cantona as the spokesman and front man to communicate their mega-million buck Joga campaign to the masses.

OK, So what if Cantona isn’t the ideal Joga front man… it’s still a great concept, isn’t it? Let the beautiful game be beautiful again! Wedgie the dirty shirt-pullers off the pitch! Slow handclap the boring time wasters until they hang their heads in shame and leave the game forever! We should all aspire to make this a game where tanned latino-types astound and thrill their colourful, big-breasted fans with skill, and trade on-field tricks with similarly skilled and athletic ball players without fear of assault from slow, stupid white men who aren’t even worthy of sharing the turf with them. Bravo Eric, Thierry and the charmingly bug-eyed and buck-toothed Ronaldhino - you have shown us the way to the Beautiful Game!

So on the morning of the game against our fellow Karori Masters 1 team I left the Joga Bonito website filled with hope for us all playing a Beautiful Game, just like Eric says and as shown in the videos.... But there’s a problem isn’t there. You know it, and I know it. Actually there’s more than one – there’s fucking loads of them. Where do we start….

1. We’re not Brazilian. We don’t look like them, we don’t dance like them and our women don’t play beach volleyball in G-strings (for which we should mostly be very thankful). Our English footballing genes have given us the Hopeful Long Ball Strategy - which incidentally was very much alive and in evidence vs Equador with poor little Rooney running around up front by himself mostly waiting for incoming from Beckham or Robinson.
2. We’re old and uncool. We’re too fucking old to waste our time juggling a ball for hours on end and even if we did no-one would want to watch any of us do it on video. I know I wouldn’t. If Masters football was a car it’d be an aging old Volvo and Clarkson would have whacked us up on the uncool wall quicker than he could say “I’m an egotistical wanker”.
3. We don’t play street football. Churton Park and Karori don’t have atmospheric urban ghettos attracting the likes of Henry and Ronaldinho to trade football tricks with slightly dangerous looking yoofs. Maybe if they were more into pyjama parties….
4. We have mud and rain, and apparently they don’t. Ever.

Ben Burn was a swamp before we kicked off. It was a swamp an hour before we kicked off, a day before we kicked off, a week before we kicked off. But somehow we weren’t cancelled, and so at 2:30ish we kicked off. That’s Ben Burn screwed for the rest of the year because if it was a swamp before we started, by the time we walked off it was a quagmire which will be somme-ish until Christmas. To the authorities responsible, and I guess we have to acknowledge that probably doesn’t include the WSA, we owe a Joga Bonito slow hand clap….

So it was that 22 old and uncool anglo-saxon suburban footballers squelched out to take position for the start of a game we all knew would have as much to do with Joga Bonito as kung fu kicks have with fishing trawlers.

Waterside Karori came into the game as clear favourites, 5 points ahead of the Turtles on the Masters 1 table and having won the first round encounter 5-3 at the same match venue. With most other divisions cancelled they had cunningly drafted in Brodie from Div 2 to make up their numbers and more of their lot were arriving even as 2:30 passed. Their home game meant it was their ref, so naturally kickoff was delayed until their full team was assembled. That’s Joga Bonito, Masters style my friends…

The Turtles were resplendent in a maroon strip with blue trim and white socks – looking quite Villa-esque in the loaned Wanderers alternate strip. The disturbing similarities to North Wellington colours made passing difficult for the opening minutes but despite this the Turtles started the better of the two teams with passes flowing from puddle to puddle and Gary and Glenn W particularly showing good anticipation of which puddle the ball was likely to stop dead in first and hacking it on with their shins with great skill. Joga Bonito indeed…

The first goal came early on when after some good Turtle passing through the midfield Lance latched onto a ball near the edge of the box, turned and hit the ball low and to the keeper’s right. 1-0 Turtles.

Passing was difficult with ‘bounce’ depending on the variable water depth and mud consistency. Not so much a question of judging the bounce as judging ‘will it skip or will it stick’? Close passing by the Turts with an occasional well-judged hoof downfield was rewarded with a majority of possession and two quick goals for Glenn W and Lance. Glenn’s was a well taken poke into the net from one of the many puddle melees around the box while Lance’s second came from a long ball out of defence from Tel (C’mon England!) which skipped past the last defender. Lance ran onto it and dribbled it up-stream well, placing his shot well past the keeper to make it 3-0 to the Turtles.

Midway through the first half the other Karori side started to get to grips with the aquatic conditions and made some good use of Brodie running forward. Brodie took the ball up the left wing and shaped to cross, hit the ball off the side of his boot and immediately shouted ‘Fuck’! The misplaced cross drifted over Snout’s waving arms and glanced off the top bar into the net. Lucky feckers – it was 3-1 to the Turts with half time approaching.

The Turts got one back before the half was up – Don made a run down the right wing and crossed in for Glenn W to pick up a second from close range. So it was 4-1 going into half time and while the game had become more even, the Turts felt we’d been good value for the lead. Then in perhaps the most significant strategic move of the game Karori went indoors for a chat and an orange while the Turtles suffered the arctic conditions on the sideline. Personally, I blame the management.

The second half continued much as the first had ended with Karori taking more of the possession and with the wind now behind them put the Turtles under a lot of pressure around the box.

Then disaster… From one of many Karori corners Brodie whipped in a curling ball which Don attempted to clear at the near post. Failing to get any more than glancing contact he clipped it over Snout’s fist and into the top of the net for his 4th headed goal of the season and first own goal for the Turtles. The Joga Bonito website doesn’t say anything about own goals so it’s unclear whether this was a beautiful moment or not… probably not. The Turtles lead had slipped to 4-2 and we were fighting to stay in the game.

Inevitably it was again Karori who scored next - this time it was GT who turned provider for the oppo when he tackled a man in the box from behind, with the ball by now several yards away. The pen was converted - 4-3.

The pressure from Karori continued. The Turts made a few promising forays upfield but for the most part were held in their own half defending a series of corners. Si did a good job marking Brodie with several ball-and-all tackles needed to hold him around the perimeter. Wal, Glenn, Don and Neil got some good passing moves going in midfield but it was getting more difficult to hold the ball in the oppo half and the infrequent Turtle attacks on goal were dealt with easily. Snout made some great saves in the difficult conditions and the defence was holding up well under the increased pressure.

The last goal of the game came from a through ball to Brodie which he picked up on the edge of the box and after a little joga-jink he was one-on-one with Snout. A clinical side-footed finish low and to Snout’s right brought the scores even at 4-4 with ten minutes to play. In the dying minutes Lance hit what looked like a match winner – low and hard but the keeper somehow got a touch on it and turned the all into the post and the rebound was cleared. The full time whistle blew and it was even honours at 4-4.

So was it Joga Bonito - the Beautiful Game? There were some similarities…. We were brown all over just like the boys from Brasil. And we were very, very cool… with wind chill allowed for Clarkson would be calling it a sub-zero performance. We’d put on an 8-goal footballing spectacle for 3 fans (not a breast among them however, we don’t count man-breasts) and Honour was shared along with the points. The only true Joy was in hitting the showers, where probably the only ball juggling of the day was to be seen.

Joga Bonito Eric? It’s football for fuck’s sake, not ballet!

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