April 28th: Turtles 1 (1) - Waterside Karori 5 (1)
by Dodger "Bastard" Kinsella

Roseneath, Saturday, 10.00 a.m. Terry ticked off the final item on his checklist and breathed a sigh of relief. His preparation was complete and he was rearing to go. He knocked back his Creatine drink and popped a final dose of steroids for good measure. As he walked into the bedroom to collect his gear bag, a plaintive cry emanated from beneath the sheets of the unmade bed. "Come back to bed for a shag, Tel. It's been five days since we had it. Even just your usual quick one will do..." "Sorry, love," he replied, "I'll have to pass on that one. I've got a heavy day's posing ahead of me and I need to stay in peak condition." A frustrated moan escaped from the sheets. "Not soccer again?" "No, bodybuilding this week. Much more important. Sod the bloody soccer!"

Ben Burn Park, Karori, Saturday, 2.00 p.m. The lads were a bit nervous. A top of the table clash against our fellow div 4 Waterside team, potentially one of the strongest teams we were ever likely to come up against, and our normally solid defence had been decimated by the defections of regular skipper Tel and hard man Big Si Law. Both had surrendered the remnants of their masculinity for the weekend, Tel with a spot of gay bar loitering / bodybuilding, and Si acting as support crew for his favourite piece of totty Kylie as she ran the Rotorua marathon with his balls in her handbag. It wasn't looking too flash in the central defence, with just regular sweeper Dodge partnered by P.K. at centre back, both renowned these days less for their all round footballing ability than for their all round girth.

It would obviously be a hard day at the office against an opposition full of talent. At first glance, the star turns were likely to be the trio of Weaner, Brodie and Tony G., all of whom had received their early grounding in the Turtles footballing academy before being traded on after having outlived their usefulness. And these three could probably expect good support from a collection of less talented players cobbled together from the depths of Wellington premier league football with the lowly Waterside-Karori first team.

Stand-in skipper Wal was unusually animated during his team talk before the game, but basically his harangue could be boiled down into a single directive about not bothering to chase the opposition around in their own half, ostensibly to avoid losing the team structure, but more likely to avoid premature exhaustion by futilely running after a team of much fitter players. This was to become Wal's catchphrase for the game and was to be dragged out with regularity every time one of the lads did something totally ridiculous like trying to get the ball off the opposition in their half.

The Turts kicked off with the wind behind us and were pleasantly surprised not to be immediately overrun. Although the oppo dominated possession and mounted numerous attacks, those that made it into our goal area were all broken down by persistent scrambling defence from the lads, with everyone contributing at various stages, and their strikers were restricted to a succession of long range shots, most of which sailed about 15 feet over the bar.

However it wasn't all one way traffic as the Turtles strung together a number of counterattacks, forcing several corners as a result. During one of these attacks, Murray hit a pass / shot at Tony G. on the edge of the area, in a similar position to that where he'd spent most of his Turtles career i.e. about 50 yards in front of the Turtles defence, and his attempted header slid off his heavily greased hair and beat the keeper on the near post. This was a real tonic for the Turts, and the lads were inspired as a result to play some excellent footy for the remainder of the half. With a couple of minutes left to halftime though, a through ball saw Brodie outmuscle Rat-a-deux to the bouncing ball and a close range header left Snout stranded.

So, 1-1 at the break, and overall the lads could be reasonably satisfied with their efforts. Cap'n Wal extracted his match plan out of his back pocket and announced the subbing off of Zil, Rat-a-deux and P.K., to be replaced by Matt, Brendan and Darrell. Grunter conjured up a particularly insidious blend of tepid water and toxic food colourings, Wal reiterated his pre-match speech, and the lads trouped back out to do battle.

Unfortunately the Turts were now playing into the wind and the sun, and this proved to be the key to the eventual result. With Tony G. smashing goal kicks well over halfway, the Turts were obliged to defend an extra 20 metres deeper than in the first half, and found themselves unable to successfully plug the resultant hole in the midfield. The Waterside forwards received copious quantities of ball and put together numerous threatening attacking moves, and eventually it all became too much for our overworked defence. With few outlets further up the field, the pressure built up and the goals eventually started to come.

The first arrived when Brodie managed to half turn G.T. and scuff a dribbly shot across the goal. On a slimmer day, Snout might have walked across and picked the ball up, but instead chose to topple over like a dynamited office tower and was well beaten. Waterside's third was somewhat controversial, as ex-Turtle Weaner waddled through and knocked the ball between the flapping arms of Snout from a ridiculously acute angle. Bastard ref Spratt missed the offside call, having taken up a position 30 metres away, but the considered view of the capacity crowd of 12 was that the Wean's belly was a good yard offside when he made his move.

These two goals may have had an element of the 'soft' about them, but not so with the next two. One of numerous corners to the far post, always a Turtle weakness, was powerfully headed back to the unmarked Brodie in the middle and he buried it in the back of the net from close range to complete his hattrick. Brodie then collected a pass about 40 metres out and made an angled run to the corner of our goal area before rifling in a superb shot at the near post into the top right hand corner.

Although we conceded four goals in this half, we did manage to engineer a few opportunities of our own at the other end. Wal made some great runs down the right wing and Livi, although generally out of sorts, created several openings. None of these chances were particularly easy though, and Pailly was unable to capitalise to give us a deserved second goal. Nonetheless, the team never stopped trying, epitomised by the effort of Murray, who made one run too many and had to be carried off in a semi-delusional state. Zil rolled back on to replace him, eager to maximise his game time due to his anticipated absence next weekend in Greytown at a retreat for under the thumb husbands.

All in all, this was a fair effort by the Turtles against pretty good opposition. Although outgunned in the territory and possession stats, the lads were more than competitive for a good chunk of the game, frustrating the oppo with some determined defensive work in and around our goal area. With the return of the absent defensive duo, there is every prospect of a closer match up in the return fixture. The consensus post-match was that the major difference between the teams was the performance of ex-Turtle Brodie, who had too many legs and too much ability for those unlucky enough to have to mark him at various stages of the game, and rounded it off with some clinical finishing. Rumour has it that a pre-season vow to give up bonking married women on Friday nights has made all the difference to his on-field performances. One can only conjecture as to how much he might have achieved in soccer if only he could have shown such dedication a lot earlier in his career.

Roseneath, Saturday, 11.00 p.m. Terry lay back in his bed, quietly reflecting on his day's efforts with a fair degree of self-satisfaction. His bodybuilding debut had gone far better than expected. He'd notched up highly commendeds in a number of categories, including mincing walk, steroid consumption, and acting like a complete poof, and was feeling pretty darn good about himself. A shag was definitely on the agenda now. He sat up and tapped the shoulder of the sleeping figure next to him. "How 'bout it, love?" "Mmmm, thought you'd never ask," came the reply. "Hey, just as a matter of interest, who won your division at the bodybuilding today?" Terry slumped back on his pillow, instantly deflating, stricken by the nightmare vision of Suzanne Prentice striding to the victory dais to collect her gold medal...

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