Grizzlies vanquish Shaka Zooloo

A Late Withdrawal from Ned but a surprise return from Lynchy saw the Grizzlies field almost a full team:

Cheesey, Floppsy, Max, Martian & Killa
Crusty, Lynchy, Big Nob, Gaffers and Scotty

Even with such a formidable line up though the Grizzlies were taking nothing for granted. We started off reasonably well going hard at the puck and working the play up the wings but Shaggers was always hard to get around and he had a couple skinny little bastards flapping around as well as Moby Dick. We got the first goal reasonably soon and then Scotty did a marvelous swim down dispossessing one of their players within feet of our tray after swimming half the length of the court. Sure he gave away a free but we defended and got out of trouble. Martian played a strong game up front ably supported by Cheesey while it was good to see that Flloppsy hadn't forgotten too much in his hockey absence. Similarly Lynchy came back and seemed to have something to prove taking it up to the Zooloo defence. In spite of this enthusiasm though the refs did seem to ping us a lot in the first half. Nevertheless we were convincingly up at half time.

The second half though saw us start to fade a bit. Forwards were getting stuck too far forward and the few times that the Zooloos did get into our half we were too far away from our backs to provide reliable options. Must be on the bottom to receive or at least hassle the opposition if they get it off our backs and turn. Just a factor about getting older and slower.

Finally with a just about a minute to go Gaffers got the puck and went belting off up the left wing only to run into Shaggy who promptly rapped on Gaffers glove and barged him off the puck. Well you can understand Gaffer's consternation when the donger went and he got to the surface only to be told that it was an equal puck. When Gaffers, pointed out, extremely politely (must have been taking lessons from Scotty) that he had had the puck the ref suggested he reconsider the merit of his comments for a minute on the side of the pool. Having had a quick look at the clock Gaffers asked whether he couldn't have two minutes which earned him jeers of derision from his team mates. Unfortunately, the ref seemed to feel that the less than flattering remarks were directed at him and got a tad upset complaining to the captain after the game.

So after trying to find the ref to offer our sincere and heart felt apologies we headed off to the pun. Killa almost collected a cyclist on the way but apart from that it was a safe trip to the pub. A number of Grizzlies couldn't make it to the pub and were consequently blamed for us not making it into double figures and I'm confident their ears are still stinging. Got ripped off on the raffle tickets and had to put up with bloody Rohan winning the six-pack but as usual we won on the food stakes.

Got pulled over on the way home and breathalised so many thanks to those big girls that bought the jugs of light, will be driving myself to the pool again next week.