Match Report - 

               LDS 9 - 7 Osterly Park Rangers


 
On a bitterly cold January night the men were sorted out from the boys early on, the men in shorts with NO gloves, and the boys in track suits, long sleave tops and gloves.  It was roughly a 50:50 split between men and boys on both sides, with LDS's 'tracksuit and glove lover' Gary Baker not letting the team down sporting his full Artic get up!  
Osterly Park arrived with a mere 3 players and with the 3 very young looking 'new recruits' they found the team looked more than capable of giving the champions a run for their money.  Even more so as LDS turned up with the bare 5 with captian Antony procliaming "im not gonna have a good game tonight" before a ball had even been kicked.  
The game kicked off and Antony's premonition of his bad game materialized, LDS with the average age of about 36 took too long to get started in the cold, the Osterly boys, average age 21, raced in too a 4-0 lead.  Osterly were tearing into their opponents with their supierour pace and energy, the 4-0 lead could've and should've been more but they found LDS's keeper Ian Fairbairn in fine form. 
LDS proffesional moaner, a certain David Edwards, tore into his team, shouting abuse to who ever would listen.  As the first half wore on LDS slowly got a foothold in the game with the LDS captian Antony making up for his earlier mistakes to score three craking long range efforts and leave the half time score a more respectable 4-3.  Half-time came and went in the normal fasion, LDS players tying to catch their breath as they listened to very good advise on how to play the game from the 'Jose Mourinho' like figure David Edwards.  Never has the football cliche 'cream rising to top' been so apt for a game, the LDS's superiour organisation, passing, movement and shooting (not from Gary) caused the young Osterly Park all sorts of problems, with ten minutes to go LDS had turned the score around from 4-0 down to 8-5 up.  The typical LDS tricks started to come out with Naveen, better know as 'Mr Back Heal', trying some audacious and poorly executed flicks and tricks!  With the game seemingly in the bag a certain Gary Baker decided he would stop running around and instead play the ball accross his own box to give Osterly a sniff of a come back.
 Victory was assured however as the non-stop, super fit David Edwards finally found his shooting boots and made sure the game was safe with two fine solo goals! In the end dispite an early scare from the talented Osterly Park, the champions streched their unbeaten run to an impressive 3 months, not bad for some old men!