This Time Last Week

7 days later I actually get the finger out to do up a report on the Linfield game.

Well this time last week the spirits were up, I was in work getting ready to hit the road to meet up with Big Daddy to head up to Belfast. In a great mood, the league had just kicked off with Derry winning at UCD. Walking into work, flicking through the radio stations on Richmond Road, yeah the road of Tolka Park, stopped flicking when I hit Phantom FM, as they were playing Tennage Kicks - talk about getting into the mood early, there was me thinking this could be an omen - how wrong can one man be.

Met up with Gary at 2pm and hit the road for Belfast, a lot of talk about tactics and what team would be on the pitch at kick-off. Got into Belfast around 4.45pm and headed off to get a bite to meet. We were close to the Students Union so ended up in The Globe getting a pint and a bite to eat for £5, good deal on what, you'd stretch to get a Burger King meal in Dublin for that money.

Then we dandered up to the Speak Easy bar for 5.30pm, going on Maribor Kev's post on DC Chat top find out it wasn't open - damn you Kev. So ended up in the other pub, with no Carlsberg in tap so ended up drinking Beat the Wife, sometimes known as Stella.

There we ran into Sinead and Niall and a few others from the QUBDCFCSC and the anticipation grew, so come after 7.15pm it was off to the match.

The Match
What can one say that hasn't been said already.

Our defense let in 2 very soft goals to allow Linfield to go up at half-time, and the worry that our defense was the weakest link in the team this season was reinforned from Friday nights game against UCD.

Come the second half, changes were made and Paddy McCourt came on and was on fire, with 2 to 3 Linfield men around him at most times. Martyn made it 2-1 and Derry up'ed the pace of the game, Linfield were tirering and the hope were up once more.

Well on the post for the UCD man I wrote "Cometh the hour, Cometh the Man" - and this match the man was the useles bastard of a referee - giving a penatly for Linfield, which can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjMvyNacbY, thanks goes to Vinny from DC Chat for putting it up. I think the words that spring to mind are "Diving Bastard" as in no way was that a penatly, and anyone who thinks it was needs to take their head out of their asses and smell the roses.

But it has to be said that the referee was awful through-out the game, my opinion after the game was that the man should not be allowed to ref an under-12 game never mind a Setanta Cup game. Was talking with one of the lads in work the following day and he said that Setanta should go across the water and bring in refs from either Scotland, England or Wales to ref the matchs, as then they wouldn't have to be worried about being biased, and also we might actually get a decent ref.

So the match ended up 3-1 to Linfield, I can't say that they didn't deserve to won, cause our defense wasn't the best and they created more chances than we did. But what I will say is that their players are great at time wasting, the amount of time's the players went done feigning injury from tackles, like they just got hit by a double decker bus was unreal. I don't mind time wasting when players take the ball to the corner flag, or goalies take their time lifting the ball, as that's all in the game, but the Linfield players were a joke.

The Fans
As always the fans were in good voice, with what looks to be around 1500 making the journey to Windsor Park and making some amount of noise, and I believe a good number of fans agreed with me about the Linfield players acting a wack when a chorus of "You're scum and your know you are" rang out with about 10 minutes to go. You could see that the Linfield players were not used to this at home.

Well, the drive back down to Dublin was a long one, and it's been a while since I was so fucked off after a match - one of the main reasons for waiting to do this write up, as if it had off been done last week, every third or fourth word would not have been a pleasant one.

The return leg in September will be a sell out and one hell off a game, and for one, I sure as hell intend to be there.