A Mother's Day Scorcher!

It's nice doing local 11 o'clock kick off's on Sundays as it means I get a bit of a lie in. My alarm that has been set on my watch for 7:50am for about 6 months now and goes off every morning for no particular reason woke me first and I was glad to see the time and that I could go back to sleep, until my phone alarm rang at 10am. I got up, washed and dressed before heading off to Shirebrook for the game.

It went quite well and it's always nice to ref in the sunshine but I was glad to get home and get the day started properly. I got home to find Milly still in bed, not feeling too well as she has been suffering Sinusitis for a while now and it's very painful. However, I had a shower and we got ready to go out as we were going shopping for some Mothers Day stuff and for a bite to eat. We started at Asda but couldn't find what we were looking for so went to Wilko's in town and picked some bits up. We then went to Tesco's and got some flowers and had a bite to eat.

We stopped off at my mums for a couple of hours first, giving her a card, some flowers and her presents and having a general chat before we had to set off as I had football at 8, had to pick some players up on the way before dropping Milly off at her mums to spend the evening pampering her!

We were playing a tough side today in our 5 aside league. I started on the bench and had organised how the team would be rotating every 8 minutes as their were 7 of us there tonight. I didnt mind starting as sub as it meant when I was on I would be on for the remainder of the game. The team we were playing were in 5th whilst we are about 7th, having taken over from a team about 7 weeks ago who at the time were down in 11th, but we've been playing really well.

Taylor gave us an early lead which helped settle us down but about 5 or 6 minutes later and it was 1-1. Then me and Raif replaced Taylor and Dan and I played in a more attacking role. I'd had a couple of little shots before my moment of magic arrived right on the stroke of half time! I'd won the ball but it was bouncing over to the far left side of the pitch but a bit of quick thinking and fast geometry, I leathered the bal against the wall hoping to see it rebound and at least be somewhere on target, giving it a big enough belt to at least test the keeper. I couldn't have hit it any sweeter as it flew towards the inside of the back post, catching the keeper totally unaware and nestling into the corner!

I thought for a second the referee was going to rule it out as he pointed to the centre circle as I celebrated but he said it had counted but was now half time. This just meant that I got extra applause as all my teammates gave me a big slap on the back. I also got a round of applause and a handshake from a couple of the opposition players as they walked past me too!

The second half we were made to work very hard but were perhaps the slightly better team. We defended well but got forward too in numbers and had a few chances. The opposite keeper was having a blinder though. He was a big chap and blocked everything we had and the one which took a wicked deflection and caught him wrong footed he was happy to see bounce back off the post! I had 3 or 4 efforst which I was at least happy to see on target but the keeper stood his ground well on them all.

Eventually the last few minutes came and we tried to keep the ball as best we could. The last two minutes seemed to take an age as we knew if they equalised we were quite unlikely to reply but we held firm and as I thought the time was as good as over, I won the ball and had my back to goal so all my team was shouting at me to pass to the keeper but instead I just run it into the corner and no-one followed, so I was able to keep it thee for some time. Then when I was aproached, the whistle went and we could celebrate a great win, and I could celebrate perhaps my first ever match winning goal at any level!