You make recall a blog a few weeks ago that announced the match fixture of the season - the Criminal Justice v Mental Health Grudge Match in aid of Derian House.
Here, in a world-first, Martin Cookson (of the CJ team) gives his completely unbiased, impartial (and, may we add - tongue in cheek) view on the proceedings...
THE BIASED BLOGGER
Post-match report
Friday 6th September will go down in history as the day Team Criminal Justice, led by the legendary Paul Bradley, avenged the injustice of 3 years ago, and hammered Jonathan Church’s team by a massive 3 goals to 2. The result, which was never in doubt, was overshadowed by the pulverising which Team Mental Health received throughout the game.
Outplayed from minute one, Team CJ raced into what proved to be an unassailable 3 goal lead. Luckily, Team CJ is brimming with “Top guys”, who decided that Team Mental Health should be gifted a couple of goals, mainly through fear that they were going to forfeit the match – in particular Ollie Parkinson, who was getting sick of picking the ball out of his net.
Manager of Team Mental Health, Jonny Church, said “We just didn’t get going today, it didn’t help that my team is brimming with prima donnas like Otis and Jake, who fundamentally can’t compete at this level. Credit to David Craggs, he put a shift in, but the best team won. Congratulations to Paul and the team. I thought Martin in particularly was outstanding.”
Paul Bradley, side-lined with injury, said “This is probably the happiest day of my life!” (And for the eagle-eyed among you, yes, this is the man whose wife gave birth to his first born son a few months ago... a happy memory that has clearly been pushed to second place now).
Pre-game CJ
Things did not get off to a good start for the CJ boys, as legend Paul Bradley was struck by lightning before kick-off (or it certainly seemed like it from the way he was walking… any excuse) meaning that 17th choice player ‘Marvellous’ Martin Cookson would make his long, long, long awaited debut.
Ruthless Chris Wheeler looked like he was getting ready to go swimming. But it turns out that he has weird legs, weird feet, and a weird back, which require him to wear what appeared to be a wet-suit.
Andrew Fletcher’s personal mission to be the most hated person in the office continued with him donning an Argentina shirt. Mike Pollard is colour-blind (true news), and was wearing a purple Orlando shirt (literally everybody else was wearing blue, as we had pre-arranged).
’Dangerous’ Danny Booth, ‘The Devil’ Sean Devlin, and ‘Vicious’ Vincent Kerrigan all made their debut’s for the CJ boys. They stopped shy of performing a haka, but were heard chanting 'Get into them!' in aggressive tones.
Pre-game Mental Health Team
Mental Health aimlessly smacked a ball around, looking lost, scared, and confused. The Team CJ Barmy Army on the sidelines (Becci Grime, Lauren Tallentire, and Cheyenne Atkinson) continued to intimidate the side. Little Stephen Moring was heard saying “I want my mummy.”
The Game
First things first…. Mark White as referee… WHAT. A. MISTAKE! Limping around in a massive coat like Arsene Wenger’s estranged son, he failed to protect any of the CJ players from some brutal Mental Health defending.
Marvellous Martin was cynically taken out by Otis within the first couple of minutes, leaving his left leg and left arm hanging on by a thread. Unfortunately, the referee didn’t see this, or anything else apparently.
Because of this, CJ were forced into an early change, and this had absolutely nothing to do with Martin’s ability to breathe/run/function at all, and was definitely not because he’s a massive liability. As the game settled into a steady rhythm, it became apparent that CJ were just too strong for Mental Health in every department. Oli “I won’t miss anything” Parkinson, missed the ball flying into his net after roughly 10 minutes played, following a lovely piece of play from the CJ boys. Soon, it was 2-0, a clever chip forward by Dangerous Danny Booth to Big Michael Potts, one touch to Mikey P, Boom, what a lovely piece of football. Just like watching Brazil.
“The Devil” Sean Devlin, even found time to do a salmon impression – there were some vicious rumours that he has fallen over, but Sean wishes to ensure fans that he was in complete control. The CJ fans were loving what they were seeing, even Cheyenne who had her headphones in for the entire game. Ex Mental Health legend Adam Stammers was spotted in the stands, and tears could be seen falling down his face as CJ smashed in their 3rd. Would he have made a difference? Could he have made a difference? We’ll never know… or care.
Given that this situation was nothing short of embarrassing, CJ decided to relent, allowing Jake Nuttall and his hair (which has a life of its own) to run through and create chances at will. Again, this has nothing to do with the fact that many of the CJ lads (definitely not Martin AKA me) were absolutely knackered by this point. Andrew “The Pacemaker” Wiles did a couple of flukey touches, Ollie P decided to come out of the nets and run around a bit, Jonny did a pass or two, blah blah blah.
They scored 2 lucky goals against the run of play. No one cares, CJ won! The real hero for the Mental Health Team, was none other than The Tank, David Craggs. What a performance. Ok, he kicked a few people, but he also pulled off a superbly timed sliding tackle on pacey winger Isaac “Swin Dog Millionaire” Swinney, which left him somewhat confused, and ashamed. No, he didn’t score either of Mental Health’s goals, but his passion was infectious. If I hadn’t been close to cardiac arrest, I certainly would have been inspired. Bravo sir.
MEN OF THE MATCH:
CJ: Danny Booth
MH: David Craggs
On a serious note, really enjoyable one and all. I hope we can do it again soon. We will be updating this article shortly when we have a final total of funds raised for Derian House Children's Hospice.
Let's getsocial...