Tag Archives: cebazat

Sunday 20th March 2011 – There can be no better example …

… of the phrase “what goes around comes around” than what happened this afternoon at Chanat.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire chanat puy de dome ligue football league franceYou may remember from yesterday evening that Pionsat’s 3rd XI won the game by a penalty which although a clear foul, happened (at least by my reckoning) about 3 yards outside the area.

Today, Pionsat’s 1st XI lost the game by a penalty which was even more dubious and despite the best efforts of Francois in goal.

Handball indeed it was, and inside the area too. But the ball was kicked in at the Pionsat player from point-blank range, hit his boot, ricocheted up to his hand and then away. There was no question of anyone “playing the ball with the hand or arm” as provided by the law, and no question of “depriving the attacking team of an advantage” as provided by another law – the ball was nowhere near goal and nowhere near another Chanat player. It was such an obvious “ball to hand” incident that no-one on the Chanat side (and believe me, it was a hotly-contested affair) made any appeal at all and they were just as bewildered as the Pionsat players and everyone in the crowd (and it was at Chanat too and there was a large crowd in attendance).

If you are going to give a penalty for that, then all of the leaning ins, the holding backs, the holding downs, the feet up by the keepers – all of these are penalties too and you may as well give up playing football and let the 11 players take a penalty kick each in order to decide the outcome.

Even Franck, the stoic and silent Pionsat trainer who managed to be the only one in the stadium to keep his cool during the famous “St Gervais foul” last April, had more than just a few words with the referee after the final whistle.

chanat cebazat puy de dome franceBut it was a gorgeous day with over 260 amp-hours of solar energy (the best of the year so far and I even ran the fridge) and the drive out to Chanat, situated in the hills right behind Cebazat, was superb. What a day for going out.

But it didn’t look like that this morning. I forgot to switch the alarm off and so despite going to bed again at 04:00 I was wide awake at 08:00. And then after drifting back to sleep again Liz rang me at 11:00. Mind you, it’s a good job that she did because heaven alone knows what time I would have woken up otherwise.

But that was my first Sunday at home since mid-January. And nice it was too. So back to work tomorrow.

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

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire cebazat puy de dome ligue de football league france… this ...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".

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Sunday 25th October 2009 – It was 9:03 when I woke up this morning

I thought to myself that that can’t be right – and it wasn’t.

Well, it was because in fact the clocks went back this morning and we are now on real time, although by yesterday’s time it would have been 10:03 and that is much more like a respectable time to wake up on a Sunday.

So having breakfasted I had to do a CD of footy photos for Xavier. He has some friends who play for Cebazat and I had photographed them the other week so he had asked me for copies of what I had. And as I was meeting him at Beauregard Vendon where the 3rd XI were playing this afternoon I needed to get my skates on.

First stop though was the fete de la pomme at La Cellette. I’d been invited by Marianne so I went along to say hello. Antoine, Liz and Terry were there so we had a good chat and then it was off to the footy.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire beauregard vendonPionsat’s luck ran out today – they only had 10 players and not one of them was what could be called a goalkeeper. For much of the match Xavier was in goal and today’s pic features him diving to push a Beauregard shot round the post for a corner. There was precious little else to cheer.

On the way back home I went via the brocante at St Gervais. And what a waste of time that was. Most of the stallholders were Dutch and if you are a keen follower of my blog you will know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis. I was looking for a metal bucket or something similar to take away my ashes (well, not mine, the ashes out of the stove) but there was nothing that would do. Some stallholder had a battered aluminium casserole and he wanted €4:00 for it. It’s not very often I come away from a brocante empty-handed. Mind you, I met Gilles and Heidi there and we had had a good chat.

Back home I plucked up the courage to tackle that wiring job seeing as it was now dark. I took me about an hour to do it, most of which time was spent trying to fish the torch out from downbehind the battery box.

We’ll know tomorrow whether it works properly.

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Sunday 11th October 2009 – It was another beautiful afternoon…

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire cebazat… and I had a nice drive down to Cebazat, between Riom and Clermont Ferrand, for the footy. Finding the town was one thing – finding the ground was something else entirely. I ended up at what can only be described as a stadium watching a wimmin’s footy match while the locals asked around as to where the men might be playing. In the end I was directed to a public park on the edge of the town where there wasn’t even a pie hut Shock! Horror!

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire cebazatIt was a good game and Pionsat drew 2-2, which was a good result seeing as how injuries have decimated the side and they lost 2 more players during the game.

The match kicked off at 15:00 so I could even have gone to see the 2nd XI, who kicked off at 13:00 just down the road at Sayat. But with no alarm clock and waking up at …errr… 11:22, there wasn’t much hope of that.

The drive out was really nice. I didn’t switch the sat-nav on until I got to Pionsat so it took me via Manzat, St Hypocrite and that way, which is a beautiful run. I meant to stop and take some piccies on the way back but it brought me back up the N144 which is nothing like as exciting.

In other news, Rhys and I are well-known for our differences of opinion on the American political scene and we have long since agreed to differ. But in more shock! horror! news, we are in fact inaccord over one thing. And that is “what the hell has Obama done to merit the Nobel Peace Prize?”

Rhys thinks that a well-filled plain brown envelope changed hands, whereas I think that it was because he wasn’t the Bushbaby and someone wanted to rub the Bushbaby’s nose in the political dirt. But the Peace Prize is usually awarred to someone who makes a major breakthrough in some kind of inherent national or international conflict.

But giving it to someone who is just about to up the ante in Afghanistan and is considering sending in more troops to fight the indigenous inhabitants – it’s just insulting and offensive. The Nobel Committee should be ashamed of itself.

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