3 opponents faced. 3 losses. Needless to say, morale was beginning to dip in the Durty camp but the season showed no sign of relenting as our next clash pitted us against the crappily named but 2nd placed GUT Kick. The squad was agitated in the week building up to our next game-Bycroft wouldn't emerge from the steam room, Ian Robinson had made his move to Canada permanent, and Janek was devouring broccoli at an alarming rate. Something had to be done to steady the (rapidly sinking) ship, and that's how I found myself (very reluctantly) joining Bycroft in his palace of warmth and vapour on the Monday afternoon before the game for a crisis meeting. I cannot and will never reveal what happened during the 30 minutes we spent together in that room, but it provided an extremely cathartic experience as well as providing loose muscles and clean pores, and we emerged raring to go. In true Durty fashion, however, circumstances moved against us before the game had even began. We could only muster 6 Durties for our clash with GUT Kick, our thinnest squad of the season, but on the plus side had ostracised Karius from goal and abolished our rotating goalkeeper policy: replacing Ian between the sticks would be Rhys Houston after his claim of being 'alright'. Preparations made, we made the now familiar slog to Powerleague for a game the bookies had already paid out on GUT Kick to win.
The match that followed has been acknowledged by pundits as one of the greatest sporting occurrences in history-it is commonly known as 'the Leicester miracle condensed into 60 minutes of 5-a-side' in the Powerleague corridors-and fellow Durty Iain Macleod declared that 'it will rank alongside my graduation, my marriage, and the birth of my first child.' It all began with GUT Kick instigating a move to a slightly larger pitch after we had just set up (pre match mind games at its finest), something we were opposed to, but actually benefited us. The larger pitch allowed us to push their players wider and therefore further away from our goal, whilst also giving me more space for my long range arse deflected sighters, Janek more space to gallop into, and everyone more time and space on the ball. GUT Kick's attempted gut kick backfired, and after I opened the Durty account with a signature long range deflection, Janek and Bycroft had soon added to it to put us in a historic position of being 3-0 up. Unfortunately, a familiar piece of Durty history then reared its ugly head-our tendency to get excited whenever going in front-and GUT Kick completed their Istanbul within minutes. 3-3. From then on, the game swung back and forward with nervy regularity; every time one team went one up, the other team would equalise. Our smaller squad of 6, thought of before as a negative, actually allowed us to keep our structure more organised and consistent. We also owed a debt of thanks to Rhys Houston, who timed his reveal as David De Gea's long lost brother well-the man was like an adrenaline pumped starfish with goalie gloves, haulting every assault on the Durty goal.
The game was on a knife edge and the clock was ticking-something had to give. The something in question made itself known with 10 minutes to go-my left calf, strained by our hard graft and loosened by Bycroft's gaseous elixirs, gave itself up to cramp and I collapsed to the ground like a sack of Filipino potatoes. The GUT Kick players hastened to remove me from the pitch as they were aware they were on the brink of not winning against the 5-a-side equivalent of Robbie Savage's Derby, but I was still able to waste precious seconds. Their substitutes enquired what the score was as I was hauled off and dumped next to them-'10-10', I replied with confidence. In the last 5 minutes of the match, I saw Janek at his most primal-barking orders and charging about with all the aggression and pent up anger of a man that had not eaten a sirloin steak in months. His rage brought about the mutual agreement of full time and I limped onto the pitch with the GUT Kick subs, all of us content with a draw. The scene on the pitch was at complete odds with our mood-the Durties were ecstatic, GUT Kick despairing. I was then informed by a jubilant Janek that we had won 11-9-my A in Nat 5 Maths had failed me, but I couldn't have been happier that it did. GUT Kick tried to latch onto my mathematical inadequacy but our 11-9 win was eventually consensual and cemented into the Powerleague and Durty history books. We had lived the cliche of 'running your socks off' and come through on the other side with our first 3 points, a +2 improvement to our -46 goal difference, and the hearts of the people. Next week the stakes (sorry Janek) would be even higher: a relegation 6 pointer against the team below us...
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