DRAW: CRU 1 – Punters 1 – Honey Badgers Show Progress, But Fail To Grab The Trophy From The Hands Of Their Arch Rivals

With the trophy on the line, Cameron Road showed up in full force to do battle with the evil Punter Empire in the bi-annual grudge match for Wednesday night superiority. (Not that their was a trophy to grab since the Punters somehow “forgot” to bring it to the game. Scandal! )

90% of the roster showed up, and Badgertown was stock piled with 20 players ready to run the Punters into the ground with their unusual supply of fresh legs. It was a good plan, and after Jefe gave a ceremonial pre-game pep talk, the match began for real.

Cameron Road were looking spry, passing the ball around and….wait…. who was that on the left wing… Adam! Back from his early retirement to put in some work against the Punters! Boss move.

CRU won a corner kick early on and Derek stepped up to whip it in to the frenzy of the box. With typical Italian flair, Gianluca opted to forgo a customary close-range bicycle kick in favor of a quick swipe at the ball… which ended up in the back of the net for an early 1-0 lead. Amazing scenes as the Badgers grabbed the early lead. But was it too early?

Some more back and forth action and like clockwork, Glendon got in behind the defense and grabbed the equalizer for Punter nation.

It was a momentary setback, but Cameron Road decided to go back to work. Big Joe rotated in up top. Conor was a force on the wings. Matt P was upping the tempo.

At the back, the full compliment of defenders were back in action. Big Dave was just waiting to slide tackle someone on the left. Danimal was back reeking havoc in the center. Chris G wasn’t going to miss his 3rd Derby in a row. Billy and Andy were patrolling the right. Jeff Z was back to give Shannon some grief. Solid effort from the back line.

With another Badger attack down the right, Adam got a shot off that pinged the far post and may or may not have gone out of bounds…. however play continued and ended with Chappy on his ass in front of goal, heading the ball in from a seated position…. but the cracker jack team of refs had deemed the ball out of play, much to Adam’s disaproval.

The Badgers had another double chance with another corner kick as Danimal crashed the box but didn’t quite catch the ball clean off his dome, but the ball came back out to Jefe whose close range header went just over the bar. Just.

At the other end, typical Badger/Punters flared as Glendon took down Conor with a bit of a horse-collar as he tried to get the ball. The referee did nobody any favors as he basically called nothing, except Conor for the resulting retaliation. Lots of yelling and loud noises ensued and the half ended with pretty much everyone yelling at Shannon from the Punters.

Oranges were back!!

The Honey Badgers really should have put the game to bed in the second half. They had some great chances. Jake did some good work (upright) to keep the ball in play and whipped in a cross to the back post where Gianluca tried a bit of flair but his shot went just wide of the goal.

Matt P got hold of a mini break away as the ball somehow scampered past Lester, but Matt’s last ditch effort at poking the ball into the net was thwarted by Keith’s last-gasp goal-line clearance.

Chappy fed a ball into Ciro who was making a run into the box, but the bunion slightly over-cooked the pass into the tiny strides.

Peterson got the ball to Chappy with space outside the box on the right, and his long-range cross turned into a shot mid-air and needed the outstretched fingertips of Lester to poke away the ball as it was headed for the far top corner.

Ramesh just barely missed the chance to be the hero for the Punters as his last-gasp attempt at a header skimmed off his newly dyed blue hair as the Honey Badgers dodged a late bullet which would have been harsh on Cameron Road considering how well they played.

In the end, the 1-1 draw was very….. unsatisfying. With all that firepower at their disposal, the Honey Badgers really needed a win but settled for slow and steady progress as they look to turn the last third of the season into something they can feel good about going into winter hibernation.

Man-of-the-Match: Gianluca was back on the score sheet in the biggest game of the season, and almost was the hero with a 2nd goal that was ever-so-close to going in.

Post-Match: Good times all around with a mega-post match.