Sunday morning against the Moon

“I’m telling you mate, the Moon are in for a stuffing,” Ralph said to me, shoving the last of his Wetherburger into his mouth with the jubilation of a hyena on half a gram of uncut coke.

“Why’s that, then?” I asked Ralph. He’d already had about ten pints that afternoon, and I knew where the rest of Saturday would be heading.

“Right, today, I’ve only drunk Holsten Pils.”

I looked at Ralph a little curiously. His off-duty-banker clobber, the chinos and casual-ish shirt, was already covered in spilled beer, his hair a mess and his speech beginning to slur.

“And…?” I replied inquisitively, “What on earth does what you’ve drunk have to do with it?”

“Well,” Ralph replied, “Whenever I drink Carling the day before a match, we always play an insipid load of crap, and lose 1-0. If I drink Stella, we go three-nil up before collapsing gloriously to 4-3 or 5-3. If I drink Fosters, it’s a respectable 2-0 defeat or win, nothing that interesting either way.
But Holsten…”

Ralph’s wiry, gaunt face acquired an almost dreamy complexion as he half closed his eyes in remembrance of some former glory or another, then reopened them with a mood of defiant exuberance.

“The day we played The Falcon. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I remember. We thrashed ‘em 7-0. You got four of them.”

“Well, there’s your proof! I drank Holsten Pils and nothing else the night before that game.”

“Coincidence,” I replied, “New age hokey-cokey superstition masquerading as innocent banter.”

“Whatever, Steve,” Ralph replied, “You’re a goalie. I expect bloody-minded logic from you lot.”

Mike, our rather geeky friend (and erstwhile right midfielder) who worked for Islington Council (doing quite what, he never really would actually tell us, but he did ‘work’ for them, although the amount of time he spent emailing and surfing the net during office hours would have given most Daily Mail readers fits of apoplexy) sat down and chucked his Guardian on the seat next to him.

“Mike!” Ralph greeted him, “Getting the beers in then?”

“Hmm,” Mike replied, “Actually I’ve been pondering the strategy for tomorrow’s game.”
“Tonight is not the night for pondering strategies!” Ralph said, “Tonight’s the night for celebrating tomorrow morning’s historic victory!”

“Technically,” Mike replied, “A victory isn’t a victory until you’ve actually gained it. It would be rather preemptive to simply go out to celebrate one in advance. Remember the bookies who paid out on Arsenal winning the title in the 2002-2003 season so early in the season that they looked rather stupid when Man United won the title instead?”

“Shut up, Mike,” Ralph said, “It’s a laugh, isn’t it. I mean it don’t matter if we actually lose does it?”

“Well it does to me,” Mike replied, “The shame if we go out to celebrate tonight and
then get thrashed!”

“Evening, fellas,” Ian, our left back, said, sitting down on his barstool with his pint of Stella, taking off his rather Matrix-esque coat and sunglasses and untying his dreads, “What’s going down then?”

“Just discussing tonight’s shenanigans,” I replied, “You ready to keep that twat of a right midfielder in your pocket tomorrow then?”

“Absolutely,” Ian replied, “I’ve been thinking of going down the Electric Ballroom tonight. Anyone else up for it?”

“I’ll join you, and I reckon George will.”

“You freaks!” Ralph sneered at us, “I’m off to Soho, if any of you decide to embrace civilisation, you’re free to join me. The rest of the lads are going too. If not, see you in the morning.”

With that, Ralph rounded up Mike and the others, and they all left in several taxis. Ian, George and I stayed in the pub a while longer before heading over to Camden.
-
Of course, when you’ve got a football game first thing on a Sunday morning, against your most hated rivals of a pub team, it probably isn’t particularly wise to stay up til 4 am dancing to goth and heavy metal before walking halfway across London, crashing round at my place smoking spliffs for two hours in the front room and then walking, already completely massacred, down to Hackney Marshes.

When we arrived at the ground, the others looked just as annihilated as us, but pretended not to be.

“Dear oh dear, Steve,” Mike said to me as I entered the changing room, “Those bastards at the Moon have beaten us the last five times. It will just be too shameful if we lose today as well.”

As we walked, in our various states of inebriation/knackeredness, out onto the field, we noticed that The Moon had been preparing somewhat more seriously than we had. They were already on the field, in formation, in immaculately white kits, and not a single one of them looked as if they had been burning a candle at all, let alone at both ends.

“Fear not,” Ralph said, nudging me, “I stuck to the Holsten. Trust me, we’re going to slaughter them.”

I hoped he was right. It would be a pretty big achievement if I just managed to survive 90 minutes without collapsing.

As it turned out, he was entirely right. The Moon had most of the possession, we somehow soaked it up, and scored two lucky goals on the counter.

For now, I had to concede Ralph’s silly football superstitions were, quite often, entirely accurate.