Round 6, Plenty Valley Lions, away

Coach a sporting team for long enough and you can sometimes feel like you’re Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Take Sunday’s game against Plenty Valley Lions, for instance. Although we’ve never faced the Lions in our eight-year history I pulled up at their ground in Mill Park feeling like I’d been there before. And it slowly dawned on me (things tend to dawn on me slowly) that I had been there before, a couple of years earlier in fact. I think we played Bundoora but I’m sure Kate pulled a hamstring and ex-Bra Tami was concussed after a heavy knock. I remember helping her off the field and trying and failing to get her to sit down. You see, though she was swaying like a stand of bamboo on a windy day, she was insisting that she was right to go back on. “Sure you are, Rocky," I said. "Sure you are.”

The sense of familiarity didn’t end there. As kickoff approached I was left, as usual, wondering where everyone was. Going on eight years now I’ve asked players to arrive about 45 minutes before kickoff. I think, as a team, we’ve managed this once or twice. On this occasion, the full contingent of available Bras didn’t arrive until 15 minutes after kickoff, when Helen blustered in having got lost en route. Since Helen exists in her own time zone (not for her our pathetic sheep-like adherence to Australian Eastern Standard Time) she’s always late, but I accept that that’s just the way it is. Does one get mad at Perth for being 3 hours behind Melbourne? No, one just accepts it and moves on. Anyway, Helen does at least get her boots on quickly, so there’s a minimal gap between her arrival and her readiness to get into the action.

By the time of Helen’s arrival the state of the game was one with which we were all too familiar: we were dominating possession and creating more chances but, through a combination of wayward shooting and a packed defensive line (that at times resembled a rugby scrum), we couldn’t get the ball in the net. But we were certainly trying hard. And none harder than Emily who, having drawn attention to herself early on by beating a number of defenders with seemingly nonchalant ease, was now playing the match with three markers. Everywhere she went they went, and one of them was particularly keen on knocking her to the ground whenever she threatened to break their shackles.

But nothing new here, I suppose. Em faces this every week and it’s why, between May and September every season, Em has permanently bruised knees. Thus, tragically, her enduring love of soccer and its attendant scars have put paid to Em’s childhood dream of being a high-profile knee model, flying to Paris, Milan and New York every other week, rolling up the hem of her jeans, keeping still for a sec and accepting a cheque for a very large amount of money indeed.

Anyway, just when it was looking like we’d get to halftime without breaking the deadlock we got our due. First the ball was won at the back with some authority by KP (playing sweeper, and superbly so). She in turn fed the ball to our midfield where Timmy (Bridget) turned on a dime using her signature drag-back manoeuvre (one that causes her arms to flap about like a poorly-managed marionette). Showing great presence of mind, despite the distraction of her arms, Timmy slipped a winner of a ball to Frannie, who had been carving up the right wing all game. Frannie took the opportunity for a settling second touch before she rifled the ball past the Lions’ goalie. 1-0. Hallelujah!

But the tears of joy were still moisturising my eyes when, soon after the restart, the ref, looking far too keenly in my opinion, spotted a handball by Jenna on the edge of our 18-yard box. Penalty to the Lions! Oh for the love of... We’d worked so hard for our lead and now it seemed it would be snatched away in an instant. But faced with the sight of our dear goalie Deb, who was glowering at her like, well, something that glowers a lot, and often, the Lions penalty taker fluffed her lines and shot wide of goal. (Jenna, who loves a pun, and the lamer the better, would say she “fluffed her Lions”, BOOM BOOM.) We dodged a bullet there.

And so my halftime talk was like so many that have come before it. I didn’t even need to think, so I didn’t. “Trying hard… blah blah… score doesn’t reflect our effort and dominance… blah blah… keep it up and it will come… blah blah… I’ve got a love-a-ly bunch of coconuts… blah blah blah.”

“You know,” Sue said when I had finished, “you should record that and save yourself the trouble of delivering it every week. Just press ‘play’.” I think she meant this as a reflection on how our games had been following a disturbing pattern of late, not a comment on the dreariness and predictability of my halftime pep talks. But I couldn’t be sure so I squinted at her to let her know I was watching her.

The second half was more or less an exact replica of the first, except, of course, in that we were running in a different direction. If anything we were even more dominant, especially with Merissa and Marian running the left wing, and Rhiannon returning to the action after a long lay off. She comes across as a real Laid Back Lucy, ol Rhi, but she has drive and confidence and it has been frustrating her no end this past month watching our games rather than participating in them. But after such a long layoff she was understandably a little rusty and twice (the first occasion being a penalty she drilled right at the keeper) she couldn’t convert a wonderful opportunity to put us 2 goals up which, if nothing else, would have allowed me to relax on the sideline for the first time since kickoff.

Of course it didn’t help my anxious state of mind that Jess, moonboot still attached, was sitting behind me and constantly encouraging and imploring her teammates. In fact, it was just after Rhi’s second miss she stood up and yelled, without irony, like a rosy-cheeked devotee at a Christian youth camp, “Keep the fire alive, Zebras!”

It goes without saying that I couldn’t believe it and, as punishment, I told her I would enter her quote into the public record.

And so the second half dragged on. While KP, Sue, Helen, Jenna and Marian were comfortably repelling the Lions’ optimistic long ball attacks we still couldn’t get the insurance of a second goal, and still Em’s defenders stuck to her like shit to a blanket —though she did shake them a couple of times, twice memorably. The first time, Em was motoring across field with the ball at her feet and her three minders all but clung to her like bad guys clinging to the roof and hood of a movie hero’s car as he makes his escape. Just as it looked like they would bust down the windscreen and nab her Em suddenly hit the brakes and all three were, in effect, thrown clear.

Vitally, Em shrugged them off one more time. With about 10 minutes remaining, Em created enough space for herself to slip a ball out the back. Rhi, left unattended (thanks to the attention Em was attracting), again found herself bearing down on goal with only the keeper to beat. This time she opened up an angle for herself and cut the ball back across the keeper and into the left hand corner of the net. She was as relieved as I was and in that instant I considered the entirety of this blog entry being ‘Thank Heavens for That’, or words to that effect.

And with that goal we were at least assured that while so much of the game brought painful reminders of others that have come before it (particularly over the past few weeks) in this case we had finally escaped Groundhog Day and fashioned ourselves a new, and entirely more satisfying, ending.

[Result: 2-0 win. Goals —Frannie, Rhiannon]

NEXT MATCH: Sunday May 30, v Northern Roosters, Sumner Park, 11am.