Monday, October 19, 2009

Smells like one of yours darling

On Sunday October the 18th Segunda A leaders Hercules of Alicante took on Real Murcia from just down the road in the neighbouring province and I missed it! Once again those thoughtful planning types at an un-named pay per view television company chose to move the kick off forward to noon, presumably to grab some of the Spanish pub punters. Surely there must be some disadvantage for both teams having to play at lunchtime on a bloody hot weekend, when everybody else in the league starts of an evening, but I digress.


The reason that Herc-Murcia was off limits was of course because Santa Pola were also at home and for years now nothing in my footy world is more important than 1130 every second Sunday. Having learned the hard way a fortnight ago, yesterday not a lot was left to chance and I smothered myself, head to toe, in the most vile smelling insect repellant. Fifty times bitten, twice shy or something like that.

In the end, thanks to some indiscriminate fumigating by the lads at the parks and gardens department of the local ayuntamiento, (town hall), only about four rock hard mozzies survived to tell the tale. Had I been aware, I definitely wouldn't have left the house stinking like trap two after a hungover bloke had just parked last nights curry.

With nine days since my last 'Pola fix I looked forward, just like last time, to a bit more Brazilian style football, what I ended up with though was something more akin to Bolton. Altea were the opponents, sitting comfortably mid-table after a reasonable start to their season, this really should have been three more points nailed on, not so.


Santa Pola centre back Miguel Tari opened the scoring with an exquisite volley from a corner the goalkeeper didn't even see, unluckily for him his stunning finish, reminiscent of Glenn Hoddle in his prime, was buried into his own net. Whoops, that wasn't supposed to happen, sorry lads! A goal behind at the break, the game turned inside the first five second half minutes. Santa Pola lost a player, Dani, to a straight red card and conceded a penalty which Jose Salero, one of twin brothers in the Altea side, stepped up to take. Pazos guessed correctly and turned the spot kick around the foot of his right post. The resulting corner was cleared with ease to set up the counter attack from which Santa Pola equalized. That man Tari again was on hand to hook in from close range following a spot of hesitant Altea defending. Final score 1-1

Meanwhile over in Alicante, Hercules and Murcia also grabbed a point each following their own 1-1 draw in front of a gate of more than eleven thousand so they probably didn't miss me.


PHOTO'S: top, have a guess which pay per view company - bottom, Miguel Tari didn't cost his team-mates all of their win bonus

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