Honey Badgers Send Back Plate of Mas Fajitas In a 1-1 Draw

There was rain and cooler temperatures in the forecast. The Honey Badgers got neither Sunday morning, and were instead treated to Vietnam-like, sweltering heat and humidity for their 8am DMZ rendezvous with a plate of Mas Fajitas.

Mas Fajitas were a mixed bag, but the core of their team consisted of a gang of kids born when the world was biting their nails about the upcoming Y2K nightmare scenario. It’s always a tricky affair to play against the youngsters, and these guys were a solid team in first place.

But what the Honey Badgers lacked in youth, they more than made up for in girth, experience, facial hair and hangovers. On paper it had the feel of a solid contrast of styles.

On the pitch, the game didn’t disappoint. As expected, Mas Fajitas relied on their Brazilian teenage twins to move the ball around the midfield, but their main workhorse was a stocky forward with a powerful frame. He had some good battles with the Cameron Road defense early, and Jaybone was called on to make a fantastic save from close range to deny Mas Fajitas a goal.

The Honey Badgers were carving out chances it the first half though at a rapid pace. Playing their slick passing game, Cameron Road showed the many ways they could hurt teams with a variety of attacks.

Chappy got his Bald Dome of Power on 3 consecutive corner kicks, the third of which was a quite spectacular diving header from Peterson’s fizzing cross, but all he could catch was the side netting. One of the headers flashed across the goal, and in the scuffle right in front of the net, New Chris almost poked in a goal. Not to be outdone, Ciro attempted a Chicharito-like backwards header, which of course, went right to the keeper. Ben Lee was a late arrival, but made his presence known with an absolute rocket shot from way downtown that left scorch marks on the crossbar. Some would say he made his presence known by playing the entire game with his shorts on backwards, but the shot was pretty good too. BT had a wonderful 1-2 with somebody, but the power on the shot was more of a tribute to Zoran than the pace actually needed to beat a keeper.

The half wound down with tempers heating up. One of the young Fajita pups, #6, took a swipe at Bret’s leg while the referee had his attention elsewhere. The enraged younger Little sparked a heated discussion with the referee and the rest of the Mas Fajita players. But after the resulting play, Steve Mckenna took it into his own hands to show the lad the meaning of respect as he absolutely went Vinny Jones and lit the kid up from open play.

Best line of the game: After #6 declared that he would “follow Steve to his car after the match,” Peterson chimed in without hesitation, “it’s a Lincoln Town Car, you can’t miss it.” There’s just some things that can only come with age and 10 years of sideline heckling.

With a brief visit from chief referee guru Aubry Daniels at halftime, the teams were back at it.

Mas Fajitas got the opening goal of the game, but Bret got on the scoreboard with a little own-goal action while defending the play. Unlucky, but the player would have scored anyway so credit to Bret for giving it a go.

With their joyous goal in the bank, the kids thought they could simply cruise to victory, but their only experience with Honey Badgers so far had been silly YouTube videos. Little did they know that actual Honey Badgers, when angered in their natural habitat and down a goal, would come at them twice as strong with fangs bared. And so the comeback began.

New Chris had one of the plays of the day as he went coast to coast and used his Usain Bolt-like speed to actually challenge the Mas Fajitas keeper as he came out of his kitchen. The deflected ball fell to the onrushing Cameron Road midfield. With the goal wide open, Billy took a crack at it from 40 yards, but his shot went just wide right. Ahh Bloody Feckin Hell!

Adam tried to show Gigi the proper technique for taking a bicycle kick, but ended up on his back with a bottle of BT’s aspirin. Speaking of BT, he continued to pound the goal with shots, well, he pounded the general region of the goal.

The breakthrough came when Peterson’s timely corner kick fell to Gianluca, who scored with an fantastic glancing header to the back corner.

And so the Honey Badgers non-losing streak continued, and with the regular season starting up next month, they are starting to put the pieces together for a nice run.