Woking M5s 1 - 11 Cheam M3s

Making Sporting History
When athletics legend Roger Bannister set out to break the four-minute mile, there were scores of nay-sayers claiming it couldn't be done, and that Roger was chasing an impossible dream. However, during a race at Oxford University in 1954, he defied his critics, and science to achieve the impossible in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

With both promotion and the league title secured last week (thanks partially to Old Georgians' ringers defeating Surbiton), thoughts on WhatsApp turned to the next challenge for the squad. Could the team get 100 league goals in a 20 game season? With the total at 82, the squad arrived at Woking motivated. Thankfully, we faced a porous opposition clearly sympathetic to our ambitions during a day which featured sun, wind, rain and hail.

Build-up
Goalman spent most of the journey to the outskirts of Woking bemoaning the fact that he would be missing his beloved Spurs' 'biggest game of the season' being played at the same time. Perhaps this explains his distracted approach to announcing the team line-up before push back. Hands down the worst pre-match selection gathering in history, with Ted apparently lined up to play CB, LB and CM. Ted covers a lot of ground during matches, but this particular task may have been beyond him.

In the lead up to the game, social media was also ablaze with rumours of a returning player making an appearance. The response of many squad members once word got out that this player would be Shashi is frankly unprintable, but I think it's safe to say that Cheam's current DotD-magnet Blossom heaved a huge sigh of relief. Come Friday afternoon Cheam's favourite florescent padding wearer was caught up in a storm about the whereabouts of his pre-match poster. Twitter was awash with discontent, and the daily's were already dubbing this latest scandal 'Postergate'. Without the inevitable intervention from Shashi, it looked as though it would take a miracle to prevent the Pole in the Goal from another tasty post-match Guinness and Baileys.

The Match
We had another strong squad for this one, despite a couple of absentees. Mike Brown was busy watching his team throw away the best chance of winning a Premier League title they'll probably ever get, and Chris Blackmore was recovering from an illness brought about by turning up half naked for the previous fixture. Sometimes I despair when hit with the realisation that Chris B is paid by the tax-payer to impart wisdom on the young. However, The Badger was on-hand this week to restore my faith (pun) in the teaching profession. Everyone's favourite purveyor of religious teachings has returned invigorated after a period of absence, and has slotted into life in the 3s perfectly.

Our opposition looked fired up for the match. They were keen to avenge the 7-0 reverse at Nonsuch, and send a message out to the rest of the league by toppling the newly crowned champions. Five minutes later, they were 2-0 down. Short corners have probably been our weakness this season, with far too many wasted. However, the squad finally seem to have settled on a menu of routines that yield consistent score-age. Brandi made it 3 from 2 games by dispatching our new favourite routine to get us up and running. We were to score two more shorts before the game was out.

Woking threatened to get back into the match with a slick short corner routine themselves to make it 2-1. However, the Heroes took a strangle-hold on the game with a stifling high press, and were 5-1 up by half time.

The half time team talk didn't really happen, as the squad were huddled in the dug-out / shipping container eating jelly babies while the hail stones crashed down. Perhaps this accounted for our sluggish start to the second half. Woking came at us, and got near our D once or twice, before we hit them on the break. This happened again and again, as Goalman, Fisty, Keddie and The Badger cut through the opposition defence with incredible speed every time we turned over possession.

As the game drew to a close, not yet content with battering the opposition via the score line, Shashi decided to commemorate his comeback appearance by shunning the opportunity to play a neat ball down the line. Instead he elected to throw an aerial into a Woking defender's face from point-blank range.

By then end, Goalman and Fisty had notched four goals apiece, with The Badger grabbing a brace, and Brandi one. Some excellent team goals in there as well. Such a big win puts us within touching distance of 100 goals in the 15/16 season, a feat that will surely have the sports commentators asking, 'Roger who?'

Post-match
With the job done, there was controversy after the final whistle from both the usual, and surprising sources. Firstly, The Badger decided to spice up the squad's post-match hose-down in the crowded showers by trying to get a bar of soap (complete with soap-dish) involved. Now The Badger has been absent for a couple of months. Speculation has since been rife that detention at Her Majesty's pleasure in Belmarsh was indeed the reason for this particular sabbatical.

Undeterred, the Tweed Brigade gathered for food, beer and voting. The group was stunned into appalled silence by Shashi on a couple of occasions. Firstly, Warrington's latest botherer of women emerged from the showers wearing a pair of trousers clearly fashioned from the leftovers of a 1970s Prada handbag, and proceeded to explain himself by stating that his mother had bought them. In an instant, this gave the squad a partial explanation of the reasons behind the creation of Shashi, the man. This was all compounded by presenting Big Gun with a piece of cardboard for DotD voting. Well, enough was enough, and the team punished him by writing his name on the offending article, again and again. Despite this, Shashi saw off his assigned Teginski like a pro. Must be all that practice.

With this unpleasantness over, the MoM vote went almost unanimously to Fisty. With a four-goal haul, this was the second week in a row that the opposition simply had no answer to him being unleashed in the 'Number 10' role. Notably the only vote not cast in the Fist's favour went to Keddie for 'not being rubbish this week'.

Final home match of the season next week.
I can't wait.

Big Gun