I’ve just come back from the footy at Pionsat where the home side has been defeated by one of the teams from the suburbs of Clermont Ferrand, Clermont Biblioteque.
And if ever there was a game of two halves, then this was it, that’s to be sure. Clermont were a big, quick, powerful team and they were sprinting through FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s makeshift defence almost at will.
4-0 up at half-time without even breaking sweat, although I do have to say that a penalty that they were awarded was not ever in a million years a penalty – the keeper clearly pushed the ball away from the Clermont player and that latter fell over the outstretched keeper’s leg after the ball had gone. Not only that, the fourth goal was the last kick of the first half and had the referee blown his whistle 2 seonds earlier this goal wouldn’t have counted anyway.
When Clermont scored their 5th goal straight from the kick-off, all sorts of horror stories were running through my head. And then a most astonishing thing happened.
Nico found the ball in plenty of space about 30 yards out, looked up to see the keeper about 15 yards off his line, and lobbed the ball right over him into the net.
10 minutes later, Pionsat won a corner and the ball broke out to blond Frederic who was about 25 yards out on the left-hand side of the penalty area. He launched it low and hard back into the area and, unbelievably, it sailed right through the crowds and into the far corner of the net.
If that wasn’t enough, about 10 minutes after that, Anthony lobbed a beautiful ball over the defence into space and Nico, beating the offside trap cleverly, beat the keeper comrotably to score a third.
Clermont launched a couple of huge waves of attack and only some desperate defending by Pionsat kept them out. And if they had defended like that earlier in the game they wouldn’t have been in all of these problems. It really was magnificent stuff.
The match ended with FC Pionsat St Hilaire back on the attack, camped in the opposition half trying to claw their way back into the game. It was a shame that a couple of Clermont’s early goals had counted.
Apart from that, I’ve been radioing today – writing a couple of programmes and a rock show for Radio Anglais in my comfortable abode up here. And I crashed out for a couple of hours too – I can’t think why. It’s not as if I’ve been overworking just now.
