Tag Archives: Matthieu_M

Sunday 25th April 2010 – It was one of the nicest …

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire sayat argnat ligue de football league puy de dome france… days of the year so far, and we had another footfest as the season draws towards a close. We weren’t supposed to have one though – it should have been last night but Sayat refused to play at 18:30 so the match had to go on today.

It was a 2-2 draw which was something of a disappointment, especially as Sayat were awarded a penalty (from which they scored) for a handball in the area that everyone else in the ground except for the referee would have said was “involuntary”.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire sayat argnat ligue de football league puy de dome franceBut the equaliser was a superb goal. Little Matthieu playing all on his own in attack (and he’s normally a full-back) struggles with three defenders and a keeper to get into a good position. His shot is blocked and rebounds to Didier who hasn’t scored a goal in all the time I’ve been following the team, and he simply lifts the ball over everyone and into the net. He’s absolutely delighted as you can see, and who can blame him?

The keeper’s trick of lying down and hoping that the referee stops the game didn’t work, and rightly so as once the goal was awarded he was running up and down like a spring chicken.

Mind you, everything happened so quickly that I doubt that the referee would have had time to stop the game even had he wanted to.

I missed the first two goals though because I was at Chatel-Guyon watching the 3rd XI. And for once all of the chickens came home to roost and they were well and truly thumped – something that has been on the cards for a while.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire chatel guyon puy de dome ligue de football league franceDespite everything that I have said and all the “advice” that I’ve been handing out that has stiffened the defence over the last 15 months, we welcomed back into the centre of the defence Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann and they played with what I call the “Lego” formation – they all go to pieces in the box.

And if that wasn’t enough we had a chase the length of the field by one of the Pionsat players, clearly enraged by an “off-the-ball incident” and deciding to have a little friendly word with the Chatelguyon no8. And no amount of whistling by the ref was going to stop him. What is even more ironic is that the Pionsat player doing the chasing is a member of the French Police Force. How about that?

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome ligue de football league franceIn between the goals, we had more entertainment too. Another one of the Pionsat players had a real go at the ref about the award of a free kick.

This went on for ages and called for some restraint, in every sense of the word. It’s nice to see the Pionsat players showing such … errr …. passion during a match. It shows that they care about the match and the performance but I wish they would reserve it for when they have possession of the ball – the round plastic thing that they kick, I mean, and not one belonging to one of their opponents.

After the 3rd XI match Chatelguyon’s 1st XI had a game. You might say that the 1st game was the “warm-up act” and you wouldn’t be wrong about that. Things certainly got heated out there in that game.

Saturday 24th April 2010 – I’ve just watched …

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire cebazat puy de dome ligue de football league francethis ...errr....interesting football match this evening.

We had all kinds of blood, guts and thunder for 90 minutes, and played almost entirely between the two penalty areas. Matthieu in the Pionsat goal had to be at his best to claw away a free header from the corner and the Cebazat keeper had to save two weak shots, but that was the sum total of the attempts on goal.

Yes, I'm back at home after all the excitement of Friday evening in Brussels. And what with the late finish getting everything ready last night, I didn't make it home all in one go. I ended up having an overnight stop at Clamecy where I froze to death in a layby (yes, it's still perishing cold at night)

Still, the one thing about that was that it made me have an early start, and I didn't lose very much as I stopped for the weekly shopping at the Carrefour in Moulins.

I was back here by the early afternoon and promptly crashed out for two hours on my sofa. That set me up nicely for the trip down to Pionsat and the football tonight.

As Golden Earring once famously said, "it's good to be back home".

Sunday 20th September 2009 – IT WAS A LOVELY DRIVE …

… out to Briffons this afternoon. It took me about an hour or so to get there – Espinasse – Biollet – Pontaumur and then up into the foothills of the Mont Dore and the Puy de Sancy. Had the weather been any good it would probably have been fair to say that parts of the drive might have been spectacular, but in fact there was an almost constant drizzle and restricted visibility once I’d passed Pontaumur.

briffons perpezat hanging cloud mont dore puy de dome franceThere are some delightful settings for football grounds around here but I reckon that Briffons probably beats them all to date.

Even with the low rainclouds ( and I bet we are pretty well high up here) the view can be said to be spectacular, as I’m sure you must agree.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire briffons perpezat matthieu malnar puy de dome france
It was Pionsat’s 2nd XI playing today, and Briffons are in Division 1 (one step higher up) of their pool so I was filled with some trepidation following the mauling last week at Pontaumur, and once more Matthieu in goal had to work hard to earn his corn, as you can see in the photo.

But I needn’t have worried. Jan, the first-choice centre-half, was back in the defence and Sebastien was playing in his habitual centre-forward role

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire briffons perpezat puy de dome franceIt was amazing how much more solid the team looked with just those two changes (although there were a couple of other team changes too).

The teams were pretty evenly matched for most of the game and Pionsat ran out as winners thanks to a typical 2nd XI goal – hoof over the top of the defence and a quick forward running on, beating the offside trap. But they had to work hard for it and fully deserved the victory.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in the attic fitting the battens and insulation on part of the last wall. Then I have to work out the layout of the stairs and the door into the room. Poncing will have to wait for a couple of days.

Which reminds me – the French verb for “to wax skis” is FARTER. So when I’ve finished the attic I can go down to the ski slopes at Superbesse not too far from here, get a job as a ski repairer and spend the winter poncing and farting to my heart’s content.