Match Report: Firsts State Cup Rd3 12/7/08 by Ron Baskin

Istria SC (LISFL) 0 Barnstonworth Rovers 4

On a cold and windy Sunday morning, the club's first team took on the queen's based club of Istria at the Met Oval. As fact is oftentimes substantially more entertaining than fiction, the author will simply restate the facts as witnessed.
Holding the illustrious status of Rover “first” team, the players’ approach was, as usual, serious and workmanlike. With 45 minutes until kickoff, the author and two other Rovers were sitting in a car, in Manhattan, waiting for (i) their goalie to show up, and (ii) another field player who we shall refer to as Fonzy Nanclares to also show up. As neither showed or answered numerous calls, we had no choice but to head to the field.
As we arrive at the field and take a head count, we realized no one has the kit. Brilliant. Who has the kit? Wait, Fonzy has the kit. So to summarize: 31 degrees, single elimination cup game, no goalie, no kit.
Fortunately (or not, it turns out) the reserve team was playing simultaneously somewhere in Queens County. First team player, Andy Abramovits, volunteers to go fetch the reserves other kit. He was left to negotiate his way to the reserve field by receiving oral instructions via telephone from Stav. By Andy’s account, the instructions went as follows: Stav: "Remember 2 years ago when we played that read team and Pugli scored that goal and you made that nice cross? It’s that field." After 20 minutes of aimlessly driving around Queens, Andy simply headed back to our field.
In the interim, over at Met Oval, the Rovers where watching the El Classico of an Istria versus Hota O-30s match. In a 15 minute span, we witnessed the following (i) a sucker punch to the back of a player’s head, (ii) the sucker punched player, in a fit of anger, running up and kicking a concrete pillar as hard as he could, and (iii) not to be outdone by (i) and (ii) above, the Hota coach feeling a need to verbally abuse players from the other team, identified a player and directed at him the often used soccer phrase of: "I'm going to put my d*ck in your mother." If you don’t understand the incomplete phrase, as far as this author knows, the coach did not own a duck or a dock.
Needless to say, the reference was not well received, so another mini brawl ensued. Eventually, the field was cleared, the game ended and now the goalieless, kit-less, and now Andy-less Rovers were required to take the field.
Star midfielder, Jordan Chirico, proposed the ridiculous notion of asking the other team if we could borrow their away jersey for this single elimination cup match. I laughed at the silly thought and then realized that this was a relatively good idea. I sheepishly walked over, asked the question, in front of their 18 deep squad, with matching warm ups, single file lines and a guy with a whistle. Their coach, seeing 10 Rover idiots, milling around in jeans and coats, begrudgingly agreed.
Soon thereafter, Andy returned from his Queens boondoggle, bringing us to 11 players, no goalie and the other team's kit. At last, progress.
In addition, our goalie, Dave Boosh, had awakened, removed whatever objects were lodged in him from the night before, and was in a cab on his way to the field.
We start the match with 10 players, including part time goalkeeper Mark Kushemba in goal. In the first 10 minutes, it was clear and wait for the goalie to show, with Kush making an uncomfortable, yet effective slapping save in goal, to keep things level. Eventually our goalie shows up, and we proceeded to spank Istria in their own uniforms. I won't go into the details of the game as they are not nearly as interesting. First half we walked all over them. Pinged the ball around and should have netted five. Instead it was 2-0 (Pugli and Andy) on two well created and finished goals. Second half, we withstood a bit of pressure for 15 minutes. Boosh made a couple of nice saves, but then we broke it open with a couple more (Andy and Einar) on another pair of nice goals. All in all a good day’s work and we advance to the next round.

We will now wait for the formal protest to be filed by Istria.

TEAM: Boosh, Baskin, Wiggy, Kush, Sammy, Viddy, Randi, Jordy, Einar, Andy, Oren and Pugli. All played well.