11-a-side team against Sunderland DFC. 28th February 2015

Our regular run out against Sunderland Deaf was a bit short notice, as their cup game was cancelled. However, two days before the game, the Sassco.co.uk squad was coming together and three debutantes joined the “regular” squad.

Ex-professionals, Martin Smith and David Duke joined the squad, while Martin’s son, Lewis, also came in. The team comprised of the two Simpsons, Muers, Gourlay, Charlton, McDermont and Turnbull (in his second outing). Macca and Gourlay were returning after a long absence of not turning up.

The weather dropped, but the tempo didn’t increase as Sassco took the lead. However, crazy defending (not by Sangha) and the inability to clear from the back led to constant replies from the DFC team, who were featuring Gavin James, one of our ex’s. This meant that they had a bit more bite. They also had Ronaldo and Curry playing for them, who assisted us last time. This time, Ronaldo spat his dummy out and walked off in the first half, but turned up later in the second.

We took a lead, eventually, so it was around 5-3 (or something like that, in the first half). Young Lewis bagged a couple of goals, while Muers scored a scorcher. Struggling to remember who scored either side of the half, but Charlie got some and Macca got some. Charlie eventually got 4, while Macca, predicting a hat-trick before the game to me and me replying to him, “fuck off you daft cunt!” actually got it.

Second half saw a comfortable lead by around five goals, before the foot was taken off the pedal, and the wind taken out of our lungs. Duke and Smith, predictably, ran the show in the middle, but amazingly neither scored, with Duke coming close on several occasions. We had so many chances, it was inevitable that they came back to within one goal in the last few minutes, but we were reasonably comfortable and were happy to conclude the game.

Charlie eventually scored 4 goals, McDermont got 3 (somehow – although one was deflected), Lewis got 2 (both in the first half), while Muers and Gourlay had one each.