Colwyn Bay 4 - Garforth Town 2

5-12-09

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is probably best known for a stupid theme that people whistle when thinking about cowboys and Indians, pistols at dawn and maybe as a spoof for a fighter staredown, but on Saturday Garforth and their bilingual visitors actually displayed all attributes. The good – Town dominating the second half, winning it two-nil, striker Greaves bagging a brace, et cetera. The bad – Town allegedly conceding four goals in a period of madness. I cannot say for sure – I blinked. The ugly – Colwyn’s entire team. No, I keed, I keed.

After forty-five minutes of comme ci, comme ça, Town went to work. One can only speculate what brought about the change – a soundtrack of Republica’s Ready To Go and Chumbawamba Tubthumping, stanozolol injections and a crate of red bull perhaps – maybe a Gunnery Sgt. Hartman team talk (you had best sound off that you love the Virgin Mary). Who knows? Whatever is was, it worked, as they bossed the second. Greaves hit the post with a header following a cross from the right, a flank that Chris Ovington caused consistent problems on for the visitors. His speed was evident in outpacing full backs, and though he might be small, so was Igor Vovchanchyn. Load up the interwebz and check out that savage…

Colwyn almost scored following an attacker’s jinking run, but the shot was cut wide of the post. Ovington almost claimed an assist in the subsequent attack, sending a ball in from the right channel just outside the box, but a lunging challenge scuppered the chance. Soon after, with a yellow shirted player down, the Welshmen obstinately refused to show sportsmanship and put the ball out of play. One day these men will play fair. But until that day, they are pukes. They are the lowest forms of life on earth. They are not even hum…

Garforth drew first blood of the second (not John.J style – ‘in town you’re the law… out here it’s me’) when a ball up to Greaves caught in the churned ground. Taking full advantage of the conditions, Greaves slid in before the advancing keeper to send the ball past him into the empty net. 1-0 in the second half, daddyo.

In less time than it takes Naseem Hamed to get to the ring during his entrances, Greaves had doubled his tally. Ovington played him in when he sent the ball across to the right channel, Greaves evaded the challenge, cut in and cut back his finish to the near post. As the fans sang, easy, easy.

Garforth clearly didn’t lose this game; they just ran out of time to win it in. It was a happier set of fans come the end, as to be honest, there is something in human nature that makes us failure parasites (hence the second half attendance of even the most disappointed of us). Yet they ended well. In dominating the second half, Town showed what they could and should have done in the entirety of the game, and earned a moral victory. Sport often draws connotations with war, and the metaphors used in this country’s ridiculously shabby, uninteresting, unentertaining sports journalism are common, clichéd and endless. They have a point though – Colwyn facing Town in the second half resembled the formerly raging Trojans fleeing as Achilles and the Myrmidons re-entered the fray, sending them scattering to the four winds. And as the Trojans could tell you, in war it is not who is rampant early, it is those who finish strongly and decisively. Do the right thing, UniBond league; one-point-five points will come in handy before the storms of winter…

Trust and Believe.