Match report by Old Git (oldgit@postmaster.co.uk) at Reserves-Fellowship Of The Reserves****

Crowd : 1049. 200 seats lay smashed, behind the North Stand goal, as if the nearby JCB (or, possibly, Titus) had run amok (and there was a police cordon around the Hare and Hounds in Norwich Road, but where do you draw the line, as an Official Reporter?)

Average temperature during the match : 4 degrees Celsius.

Match officials: Perkins, Beever and Bird. Good English names.

WARNING : THIS REPORT IS WRITTEN IN THE STYLE OF LAST SEASON, FOR ONE MATCH ONLY, IN RESPONSE TO PERSISTENT REQUESTS FROM TWTD READER WARREN, WHO FEELS THAT I HAVE SOLD OUT TO THE STRAIGHT WORLD OF MANLY REPORTAGE AND THAT I AM NOW INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM SOME CUB REPORTER CALLED DEREK DAVIS, but the Report will still be better than the match, if less easy to read.

Heartbreakingly, Ipswich Town Reserves tonight pretty meakly surrendered their unbeaten record, against a Charlton Athletic team that were stronger on paper than on the park, when Charlie MacDonald--a London combination, at least nomenclaturely, of Charlie Nicholas and Supermac (do you remember that from last season ?) - walked through Karic and Brown and hit the ball across Branagan and just inside the far post, just before half-time.

Match over. Town Reserves are still 6 points behind table-topping Derby, with one game in hand, though I cannot find that table on the Web, no matter how I juggle initials : twtd dot, opta dot, fa dot, itfc dot...

Might as well tell you our team, though :

Chubby, cheerless, chunky-chinned Keith Branagan in goal (who is, as I have mentioned before, in real life, a close friend of the live-in lover of the ex-sister-in-law of the my current live-in lover; )( incidentally, Brian, you pronounce that 'Ser-rainy' not 'Ser-reeny'; for that matter, it's 'Mat-tay-oe' not 'Mattee-oe'. It's a foreign language, see. Gullit is not pronounced with a hard G. And you were a headmaster ( though, admittedly, of the school at the very bottom of the Suffolk league table. ) If an oldgit can bother to cope with new stuff....IMHO. Beattie can pronounce anything however he likes. I'm just pleased for him that he can still speak. )

At right back, Fab Ian Wilnis, who, as ever, was as weak going backwards as Chris Makinheavyweatherofpassingtheballforward is when he goes forward. How do you choose between them ? Let's not. Let's have Mauricio back, who was nuisance enough, last week, to make George sub in-form 'Chips' Reuser, who was taking a Tarriccoing. Fab has shaved off his rug, as requested, but this now emphasises his Roy Hudd-style puffball head...( sorry Fab but I'm still narked that your personal website keeps writing to me via some sort of automatic web-servant, trying to flog me pills. )

At left-back was Amir Karic.

The centre-backs were the man I described last year as, 'ever-balder Wayne Brown, this season's least improved player, who was making little impact.' No change there then, either. He was booked immediately after half-time for swearing at the ref for (rightly) penalising Bramble, who will become a legend but, on a bad night, for the Reserves, could look like a pub player if you didn't know better. Move on.

Last season, Charlton won this tie 6-3. They did. James Pullen collapsed, mentally.

Wait a minute, did I say Karic? The so-slow, wantaway, Go Away Slovenian? In last year's report, I wrote, 'A mere talking-to sufficed for Amir Karic after 35 mins, but he was in the book, of course, within another couple of mins. Magilton complains that 'Tractor Boys' ignores our silky style : in Karic's case, it over-states his gentility'. So, what was different this year? Only that he stayed unbooked for 5 mins longer, this time around***. He was subbed 15 mins after half-time, before he was sent off for swearing, again, in English, at the ref. He would have been. He has lost a little weight and cut his hair shorter, but I still remember him. My only problem will be ever forgetting him. He was subbed by rugby-playing academy winger Matt Richards, who made a tidy debut. He looks like John Kennedy. Not the President. ( Well, who, then ? You remember, he played three times, after Triko left. He's at Canvey, now, with fat Gregory. )

The one good thing about being very, very old.......No, no sentence in the English language begins like that. All I was going to say was that, despite my age, I still like creative midfielders and the opposite sex (that means ladies. You young folk, with your alternative comedians and use of the word 'wicked' to mean 'nice', may also have moved the goalposts on the expression, 'a liking for the opposite sex'. For all I know, it may now mean a fondness for livestock. )

So, I like Sixto 'Mumo' Peralta.

He could grow as big as Kieron Dyer, metaphorically (though I have to alert you to the imminent footballing demise of Nabil Abidallah, the Subuteo-sized Dutchman, as he will never grow as big as Dyer physically.) Mumo's sadly already too big for the Reserves. We Reservistes were enjoying him without any of you fancy-dan normal people - who only watch the first team - knowing anything about him. We've still got Pablo Gonzales Counago, but the fun was in watching those two Latinos pooving about as if they were barefooted lads kicking rags in the desert (which is how and where Finidi George apparently was discovered. He's in the desert at this moment, literally near Timbuktu.) (Could you be near Timbuktu in any other sense, then? Well, I simply mean that Finidi's in Mali. So is Timbuktu. And, some people say things like, 'literally facing relegation in the face'. Which is illiterate and illogical. And we're not, anyway. That's Leicester. And what does the face of relegation look like in bed? Bassett's face clearly doesn't contain teeth, at night, but perhaps I'm straying too far into the desert. If I don't get on, the others will already be on dessert. ( Sorry. )

I was right about Counago, Blue_Army and Lord Lucan, when we saw him debut at Braintree in Adam Tanner's brother's testimonial, when I called him Bontcho D'Avray. Old men never forget the minutiae of long-ago arguments, even if they cannot remember to fully button their slacks. Pablo is now vying with the memory of Richard Logan, in the strikers' pecking order, but beach footballers like him are more welcome in the Reserves than old plodders like Wayne Brown, Grimsby's Gary Croft (as I now think of him) or even Rotherham's Richard Naylor.

Tonight, Pablo showed flashes of brilliant ball control and that kept my patience in check until the 77th minute, when it snapped like a Les Ferdinand hamstring. He will never, ever score. As a centre-forward, he combines Geraint Williams with Bobby Petta.

Against Chelsea Reserves, Darren 'Hat-trick' Bent and Martiyn 'Chips With Everything' Reuser were the other cracking pairing that had us saying, 'play the Reserves instead of the First XI'. In fact, Sir George stole Sixtoes and Martiyn The Gourmet, and Thomas Gaaardstoes, but, instead of super silky seventeen-year-old scoring sensation Darren Bent, he persisted with veteran journeyman** Marcus Bent......who turns out to be 23. I thought he was older than me - whoa, hold on, only Parkinson, The Queen Mother, and some of Jim Davison's best material come into that category - but it turns out that I was confusing his passing clubs with his passing years. And it turns out that he's got more clubs in his bag than yer average target man, being full of flicks and tweaks. I had him down as a black Peter Withe but.....oh, this has nowt to do with the Reserves, has it ?

(I know that the clamour for me to write first team reports is almost deafening but I'm pretending not to hear it and, anyway, Phil - The Rather Taken For Granted TWTD Reporter On Everything Every Day Forever - is probably happy to report present day matches as a blessed relief from the task he set himself in his 'How The Blues Came Back' book, of reporting Every Match For Ten Years. Have you read it ? It made Shackleton's 'Trudge To The Pole' seem like a fast-forward through a skipping video*. Where were the puerile puns and meandering gibberish that all good football reports surely contain, Phil? Facts and figures ? What about warp and weft, my boy. But what does Phil care, now that his book has outsold Stephen Hawking's latest, and he's as rich and good-looking as Posh Spice. (Is Posh too thin? Is Becks too thick?) (Hawking says that, when people say, 'Aren't you that Professor Stephen Hawking?' he says, 'Damn it, everyone's always mistaking me for that bloke !')

(I have to mention a fine Suffolk man called Tony, who I will send this to, who also has motor neurone disease. Hawking is 60. I've known Tony for 38 years. Good luck, Tone. He is the most natural ball player I have ever seen and a Good Sport. I never was a Good Sport ( says my father in Sydney - oo,er, missus - who, this week, at his very, very great age, has touched a computer for the first time in his life; he's bought one and he is now a subscriber to twtd email news. He doesn't like these reports. He, inexplicably, thinks they are prattish but I suppose he will actually be reading this. Pardon? He's a bit deaf. Morning, Dad, if you're reading this hot-off-the-press. He's disappointed with me for wasting my life writing rubbish like this when I should have...er, what, Dad ? I did create a million pound company once. Oh, yes, and then I lost it. I see.) Dad prefers my son, Non-Pot Harry, who, this week, has been appointed captain of his school football team, and always says 'Well done' if you beat him and 'Bad luck' if he beats you. Football's Harry's only interest. Apart from rugby, hockey, cricket, swimming and tennis. And he's a member of Woodbridge golf club and the current Hintlesham Suffolk father-and-son golf champion. Well, he is. )

I've got to get the story back to Darren Bent, somehow. He was out of his depth tonight. I can't believe I'm writing that. His first proper shot came in the 69th minute, when he block volleyed into the grateful etc of goalie Ben Roberts. 'Daz'z most effective move came when he was brought down in the 79th minute by The Last Man, Michael Turner, who was only booked, and Nabil (who replaced Miller after 72 mins) only plopped the free-kick onto the roof of the net.

The good news is that the success of the Reserves has bubbled up into the First XI. Tommy Miller fetched and carried for Sixto : Tommy's the Reserves' Jermaine Wright, which is not enough to carry a whole midfield, especially when supported by fast stagnating Ashley Nicholls.

And our wingers are promising and it remains promising that we have wingers. On the left, tonight, was Kevin O'Callaghan or someone who looked like him, tiny Ulrich le Pen, who stands at the opposite end of the manliness spectrum to Sean Penn, who wowed us a couple of times. Counago keeps close to his man, in a slightly pervy way, hoping for a free-kick : le Pen keeps his distance but is a proper footballer. Which is nice. Someone called Greg Shields was booked for fouling him in the 25th minute, which perhaps was why le Pen was subbed in the 74th min by young Ian Westlake.

Young Darren Ambrose was our Ian Duncan Smith..er, our right winger, and he is making progress. He and the other Yoofs will be in cup action against Coventry at FPR on January 21st, next Monday as it is known, though I have to apologise to whomsoever it was on the Message Board that I definitively told that tonight's match was next Wednesday.

I think that'll do now. The Charlton Athletic Club, football section, whose threadbare past but repectable, solvent and achieving present bear comparison with Bobby Charlton's comb-over, were top-heavy with stars : their all-blond attack, of Jonatan Johansson and Mathias Svensson, their Bulgarian international, and old Chris Bart-Williams ( whose cycling shorts, and un-tucked-in shirt were Demis Roussos giveways...now, he IS a black Peter Withe, ) coupled with another failing member of the Todd family, Andy, should have given Town Reserves a much harder time than they did. We lost this match. Charlton didn't win it. None of them could have eaten three Shredded Wheat, Jack. ( Jack Charlton, you see. I can't risk it. I've got to spell some of them out. )

Good night, mate. ( NOT Karic. Taking all that money. My money. So does my daughter, Twiggsie, but she got full marks last week, in her driving test written exam and was top of the class in her Business Studies Mock Module One AS level, whatever that means. She's an equal drain on my ever-diminishing ( Dad ) finances but she's got redeeming features. Wantaway, Go Away.

THE END

copyright XXII oldgit@reserves

olgit@reserves and oldgit@res.com.eu are registered trade marks

oldgit was wearing new Christmas underwear so thick that its presence could yet be observed through oldgit's typically very stout britches.

****And Honorary Member Of The North American Supporters' Club And I Think That Anyone Who Genuinely Travels From Abroad To A Town Match Should Be A Guest Of The Club ( and there should also be specific provision for ex-players, who should automatically be treated as very important guests whenever they feel like coming to a match, even if they're an ex-fringe player, like Kevin Steggles who, amazingly, but good for him, brings his entire family to all Reserves matches except tonight, when he stayed at home to watch Norwich beaten ( by Chelsea, 3-0. ) But his wife and nice daughters still turned out ! Ex-players should be made to sit in a pen, so that you could go and gawp at them and say, 'who were you ?' )

***I actually missed Karic's offence but Kelly Steggles said that it was a foul on Bulgarian international Radostin Kishishev, although she didn't use those words, as Bulgarian internationals' names don't roll off the tongue in real speech, although one of Town's most fluent chants involved a Bulgarian World Cup semi-finalist, as I remember....Bontcho; Bontcho, Bontcho; Bontcho, Bontcho, Bontcho, Bontcho. Cracking punctuation. It's what it's for.

**What, 'veteran, Viking, vegetarian volekeeper' ? That wouldn't be accurate. This is education, not entertainment.

*Remember that I'm writing this for reasons of entertainment rather than education. Phil kindly inscribed and delivered his book to me and it is a topical and timely treat, as conscientious and complete a record of Town in the Nineties as his daily scratching at the coalface of itfc is a consistent record of today. Vinnie Jones says he has become very sensitive to criticism, now that he is an Actor. He says that his critics know who they are, and, more importantly, Vinnie knows who they are !

Email positive criticism, questions about football or the match in question, questions about Life, requests for charitable appearances or for charitable mentions in my reports, to oldgit@postmaster.co.uk. Please keep your comments amusing. If a personal reply is required, please enclose a pound ( or seven euros. )

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