Death threats and fighting spirit. IUE 2-1 Villoreal

Friday 13th October, 2007. Scorers: Mark (pen), Irial.

Five minutes to play, 2-1 up. The sea, no longer red but now sky blue, that is our defence opens up, Villoreal's lanky striker (and token nice guy in a team of psychopaths) runs onto a pass and slots in past Igor. All too familiar. Here were go again, we all think. But no, it hits the inside of the base of the post and goes across the goal. Maybe this season will be different... Three points from an absolute battle of a game is a good start. Legs are tired and voices are hoarse. We are in full swing again. Fights on the bench, death threats, separating the ref and the opposition, being told to **** off back to where we come from. The beautiful game in the land of the world champions.

With four new players on the bench, but a familiar starting line-up, with only Sebastian and Mate new this season, we should have been able to get quickly into the groove of our passing game, especially after all the small sided games in training. Strangely however, we were actually better at keeping our shape and playing in a disciplined manner than we were at getting the ball on the floor and doing what we do best. Our 100 mph starts of last season were not repeated and it took us twenty minutes to really get going. The three Irish lads with the dodgy barnets in the side were in the thick of all the action (almost) for the whole game...

Number 3, Mark Jones. If there is one thing that Mark is better at than shouting abuse at the opposition and the ref it is shouting abuse at his team-mates. He excelled in this for the first twenty minutes. 'He should calm down,' was suggested on the bench. When Igor picked up a 'backpass' from Dave six yards out, which they blasted straight at a sensitive area of my midriff, paralysing me for a moment, Mark was the one who cleared the ball as their striker rushed onto it, clattering Mark, who made a great yelping noise and collapsed in a heap. I wonder who he learns these things from. If there is one thing he is better at that screaming abuse and yelping, it is certainly not penalties – I saw him miss four out of four in training the other week WITH NO GOALKEEPER. Didn't stop him from slotting his third penalty for la squadra fantastica last night though after Davie Horan had been bundled over right in front of goal.

We won the penalty after a classic IUE move, with the ball spread wide down the left into my path, after a couple of passes in the middle. I cut inside, look up and see Irial. Irial wins the header which goes across the goal to Davie Horan who has the goal at his mercy. Foul. Penalty. 1-0. Villoreal start moaning. I say start, I mean I think this team moans for a living. Ref says that they shouldn't moan as the goal he had disallowed a few minutes earlier should have counted. Unbelievable. Well, it should have counted. Their player passes it through his own defence to Dave McCourt, who whacked it in. Ref panics, blows whistle. We point out the fact that he is a lunatic. Somehow all of this means we deserve a penalty. When we got the ball on the floor a few times in the second half of the first period we looked like a genuinely good side, we had three or four crosses narrowly miss our onrushing forwards – Irial hit the post with one, and their keeper sprawled brilliant to palm away one of mine. I almost scored from 45 yards with a freekick after seeing their keeper about 29 yards off his line, followed by great keeper-makes-brilliant-recovery-save-then-bangs-his head-on-the-post routine.

Number 9, Irial Glynn. If there is one thing Irial is better at than scoring belting goals for the EUI it is certainly not correctly pronouncing arbitro. Who cares though – a few minutes into the second half a good move ends with Davie H squaring the ball to Irial just inside the box. Swivel and shot on the turn. Left foot. Top corner. Trade mark goal, trade mark Irial grin and celebration. Beautiful. 2-0

Back to Mark... After Mark scored the first thing he said to me was that he wasn't washing the kit. I told him I'd do it if we kept a clean sheet. Having none of this, he decided to give away a penalty. Fair enough. Great penalty. 2-1. Ten minutes of panic and disarray. We have serious psychological problems I think. We struggled to keep our shape or the ball. After numerous alterations, and an injury to Sebastian after we had made our last substitution, we eventually regained composure. Nate allegedly broke their number 4's ribs. This sparks acrimony between the benches and death threats (honestly, death threats) for Nate, and then for me when I suggested it might not be a good idea to kill one of our players. Then the ref loses it completely and goes over to confront their bench (which had about 4000 people on – all on crack cocaine seemingly). Me and Andrew go and separate them and the ref and tell the ref not to send one of them off from the bench. Ref doesn't send him off. Villoreal get pissed off at me and Andrew and the threats of violence begin again. My sexuality was questioned at some point, by as Arnout put it 'the biggest frocio you've ever seen'. I have to admit though, I have been having some doubts recently...

Number 10, David Horan. After winning us the penalty, setting up the second goal and screaming at the ref in English for the whole game, Davie found himself playing centreback for the last 10 or 15 minutes. Having been subdued for a lot of the game, he decided this was the time to excel, taking on 4 or 5 players on the edge of our box every time he got the ball. If you can keep you head while... Anyway, if only he could do that nearer the other goal next time...There were a couple of great clearing headers by Mark and Dave near the end, and apart from an abomination of a defensive line right near the end, the back four played well.

Leo and Jaime were great outlets after they came on and Nate offered great energy and elbows in the middle of the park. Leo has an, erm, interesting miss near the end meaning we had to sweat a bit longer. This game was always going to be more of a battle than a football match. The win was the important thing, and we were obviously the much stronger side. That's not always what counts in these games though, and we should be proud of ourselves for our spirit – it's in many ways much easier to win games against stronger sides.

After the game we were on the verge on a brawl for a while. The ref ran off straight away. I felt genuinely sorry for him last night. Looking after Nate was the priority, who was in danger of getting lynched. I mean, this is Nate. Such a nice guy that if he entered a nice guy contest he would come second, just because he's so nice he would let someone else win. If some demented florentines ask you about the whereabouts of the number 14, just shrug your shoulders and walk away. Not like Trechsel, who came storming round the corner, just as things were calming down, and 'did a Mark' and starting screaming abuse at them again. Thanks Prof. Well done to Tijl for sticking up for us as well. I'm sure they were scared of us all really.

Team:

Igor- Andrew (Leo), Dave M, Arnout (Miguel), Mark - Mate (Nate), Sebastian, Dom, Luke (Jaime) - Dave H - Irial