AFTER a tough football lesson on how not to play the game at 100 miles an hour last week against the Twini 1st side, the Toti O35s bullets got back into cruise control mode by playing guys their own age when they faced up to visitors, Fynnlands last Wednesday at Toti Rugby Club.
Coach Decian ‘Quasimodo’ Romani’s hump is finally receding and fortunately he will not be admitted to hospital for surgery but has been reported missing in action. The biggest casualty was the news that Avellino is going to be out with a torn calf muscle for a month or two, which is a huge loss to the South Coast all stars squad. Caretaker manager, Janos Molnar, had his hands full picking the side and he got it spot on again, seeing as the team he selected in a friendly against Fynnlands a couple of weeks ago managed to achieve the same whitewash results.
Marc ‘Sheppie’ Shephard is going to go down in history for possibly scoring the fastest goal in the history of the over 35s when he snuck his first goal in on the near post within 40 seconds of kick off and then Michael ‘Chappie’ Chapman buried the second goal shortly afterwards and before Fynnlands could catch their breath, Sheppie had slotted his second goal. I had to pinch myself and check if my coffee was cold because being 3-0 up in the first 10 minutes was totally unheard of as we are normally the team on the receiving end of such a hiding.
Chris the Grundy machine played his first game of the season after recovering from a tweaked groin injury that he had sustained during an exuberant karaoke session awhile back at one of the local watering holes and Colin Dunnet is back in the fray to revive his illustrious soccer career from way back during the hippie days.
Fynnlands were allowed to play after the bullets went to sleep, resting on the 3-0 cushion but this time there was no fourth choice, dodgy goalkeeper between the sticks because bulky Conrad Rubino was back and ready to blot out any strike on target. After the break Toti came alive again and failed to capitalise on a number of easy goal-scoring opportunities with catastrophic misses coming from Chappie and Shaun Holmes right in front of the goals. Chappie then redeemed himself and scored his second goal but the hero on the night was Sheppie for clinching his hat-trick in fine style and effectively placing the Toti over 35’s second in the log and hot on the heels of favourites Juventus after the first league game of the season.
The final score was 5-0 to Toti.
