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Malcolm Baggio is here to download some Ramblings Megabytes from his Raydon hard-drive into your readership memory stick.
After an impressive start to the season in which they won their opening seven games, Raydon have lost the subsequent five. Raydon Manager Roland Peters has been the subject of a great deal of abuse, criticism and even violence from players, directors and supporters of the club. They blame him for the team’s slump due to his refusal to play several key players.
The club’s joint number one supporter (along with his dog Errol) and occasional linesman, Reg Shuttlebuck told Those Were the Days, “After the first seven games we were riding high in the league but since then Peters has left four or five of our best players out of the team for every game. Our chances of winning the league are shot to bollockery now. What’s going on!?”
Dougie McManahammond, Dave Mackinackie, Jack Crankleshank, Mal Chipaway, Saul Quan, Jason Gooseflesh, Andy Slipper, Derek Diffydale and Jack Funtingdale have all been dropped at some point during the team’s sticky patch. Veteran midfielder Les Candlestick has been restored to the team after eight months in the wilderness whilst fringe players Colin Muggles and Ronnie Twig along with recent signing Shaka Shaftsville have also been drafted in.
Roland Peters explained, “It was getting too easy. It’s not a challenge for me when we’re pissing over everyone we play so I thought I’d use a few……..shall we say less capable players so I can test my managerial acumen. I mean, if you were bloody good at tennis and the only opponents available to you were shit, you might play with your weak arm to make it more challenging for you.”
Peters has been confronted on the touchline by angry fans, had heated arguments with club Chairman Lionel Stubbs and even been involved in a violent scuffle with Jack Crankleshank in which he lost a lip.
Peters remains non-remorseful though. “I’m the bloody manager, I can do what I bloody like!” he told me.
The home match against Rendlesham Rangers saw Peter’s revert to a stronger line up. George Mnunga and Jack Funtingdale were the only key players that he excluded as he decided it was time to give the team a bit of a boost. “I still aim to win the league. I just don’t want it to be a piece of piss,” the eloquently spoken Peters said at a pre-match press conference.
Five minutes into the game, Raydon suffered a blow when central defender Jack Crankleshank was sent off for the eighteenth time in his distinguished career. The mighty-man-mountain of a defensive rock had been on a heavy drinking binge the previous night to celebrate the completion of his new front porch. Unfortunately, he was a little worse for wear and as he rose above the opposing number 9 to head away a dangerous left wing cross, he inadvertently expelled deluge of vomit over the head of his opponent. Crankleshank pleaded for leniency with the referee in view of his lack of intention but he had already made up his mind and duly gave Crankleshank his marching orders.
There was a 5 minute delay to allow the Rendlesham striker to clean up and change his shirt. He returned to the pitch, still visibly shocked and with small pieces of semi-digested food stuck in his hair. The game restarted with a Rendlesham penalty which was blasted home by the vomit victim himself.
As well as being reduced to ten men, Raydon were somewhat handicapped by the fact that none of their defenders could bear to stand anywhere near the Rendlesham number 9 due to the hideous stench of Crankleshank’s vomit. He took advantage, heading home two further goals before half time, with no Raydon player willing to mark him.
Raydon’s defenders returned after the half time break with pieces of tissue paper stuffed up their nose to stifle the whiff. Roland Peters decided to use his notorious three-pronged battering-ram of a strike-force with the heavyweight Nigerian George Mnunga coming on to join Mackinackie and McManahammond in attack (dubbed the Emineminem strike-force by the Raydon Bugle). The trio duly turned the game round, linking up well and creating a host of chances. With twenty minutes to go Raydon had stormed into a 4-3 lead with two goals from McManahammond and one apiece from Mnunga and Candlestick.
As for the Raydon defence, the tissue paper was doing the trick as Chipaway and Diffydale kept the number 9 well shackled. However, it proved to be Raydon’s undoing when Diffydale accidentally took a particularly deep breath through his nose and managed to snort the piece of tissue up into his cyanosis. He fell to the ground in agony with his eyes streaming and had to be driven to casualty, ironically by Jack Crankleshank who had been the catalyst for his injury.
Raydon brought on Shaka Shaftsville who has featured heavily during the team’s slump in form. Shaftsville, who suffers from rheumatism, was signed from Dunwich Hawks before the start of the current season. I spoke to him at his first training session with Raydon and he admitted that his condition has had a serious detrimental effect on his footballing ability. “I shouldn’t really be playing. I often have trouble bending my knees,” he told me.
Shaftsville slotted in at central defence and within 8 seconds he had allowed a Rendlesham striker to slip past him with ease and fire past Gooseflesh. Despite Raydon having most of the possession over the closing stages, Shaftsville’s hesitation and general inability to move led to three more Rendlesham goals before the final whistle. (Result Raydon 4-7 Rendlesham)
Derek Diffydale is on the road to recovery after undergoing an intricate 18 hour operation to remove the lodged tissue from his head. Specialist Surgeon, Jesper Szawatkowski was flown in from Portugal to conduct the operation. (He is actually based at Ipswich Hospital but happened to be on holiday at the time.)
“The tissue was incredibly deeply lodged,” he told me. “We had to practically take his face off to get to the bugger. It was a bit like that film with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta. If there’d been someone else undergoing a similar operation at the same time I’d have been half-tempted to swap their faces round for a bit of a laugh!”
Diffydale is expected to be back in training in eight weeks but is currently in considerable pain. “I’m alright as long as I don’t inhale,” he told me.
Raydon now face a real struggle to regain the ground lost over the last couple of months and Roland Peters may well regret some of his recent team selections. But in the post match press conference, an upbeat Peters said, “We’ll still win the league, you mark my words. Today was just a bit unfortunate. We’ll bounce back. It’s a bit like a yo-yo. We’re at the bottom of the dropping stage at the moment but we’ll start to whiz back up again soon. And I’m in control of the yo-yo so when it reaches its optimum height I’ll catch it. I won’t let it plummet back down again.”
Supporter Notice: The kick-off for the match against Thetford Foresters on Sunday January 6th has been moved from 10am to 1pm as it’s Roland Peter’s 50th birthday the night before and the lads are likely to get totally shit-faced. Happy birthday Roland.
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