Tournament Fanatics Bereft of Fabulous Beasts,

During this troubled time in the East Fife’s history, a number of committees and actions groups have been formed; one of them, Fife Fans for the Future (FFFF), organised a 7-a-side football tournament for the public yesterday. This was the signal for the East Fife fans team (the B.A.S.T.A.R.D.s – I always wanted to call the team “The Jim Moffat Football Experience”) to reform.

I shouldn’t really be in an East Fife fans football XI, there ought to be 11 people who want to play football and who are more committed to East Fife than me, however I was roped in because I'm reasonably competent; it suited me to be a member of a team like this, there was no pressure to train or play and games were supposed to about fun. The team travelled the world playing other clubs’ fans teams. I rose from the position of right-back (my favourite) to centre-back (not my favourite, but it’s advantageous to have the best defender in a central position). Results were chequered. I was promoted to captain. Unfortunately, the manager found it difficult to organise a team for each match, the no-pressure, social reasons for forming the team meant that people weren’t committed to turning up for matches. The manager gave up, he was replaced with another who wasn’t committed to turning up and by the time I found myself managing the team, it was a shambles. The second manager railroaded his way back onto the scene but the same events occurred and the team petered out.

Mustering 7 from the old squad shouldn’t have difficult for the tournament, 10 players (the squad size for this tournament) were originally named alongside a guest manager. 4 players and the manager called off. A new goalkeeper was found on the internet forum and another two players were recruited – that meant a squad of 9 was expected to turn up to be managed by me. Come 1pm, when the tournament was scheduled to begin, there were five of us with no strips. 15minutes later, we had 8 players, but no goalie, and Igor (founder of the B.A.S.T.A.R.D.s and key organiser) broke the news that he couldn’t bring our usual strips and had brought his old football team’s instead – red with yellow trimmings, emblazoned their sponsors, http://www.marxist.com/ (I aim to understand what Marxism is and I'd be welcome to help in doing so). We had a squad picture taken by GoF for the AFTN website who was our sponsor on the day. I invented a name (Craig Paterson) for the goalie in case he eventually showed up and with the final space on the team sheet, I wrote “Dave Griffin”. Dave Griffin is a legend; he’s been with me at every club I’ve managed. In the event of an absolute personnel crisis, a complete stranger (to the organisers) gets dragged onto the team and plays the match, a sort of wild card player.

Meanwhile, 14 teams had been expected to compete, only 5 showed. It was to be a league system with the top 4 going to semi-finals. Despite how rotten we were, there was a chance we might have just qualified.

I asked my players to arrange themselves into my formation and follow my tactics, and I appointed a replacement goalkeeper, ahead of our first game against a team all adorned with Rangers strips called “Juventitmuss”. The black-shirted referee mocked me because I forgot about the whole meet-in-the-centre-shake-hands-flick-coin-and-decide-ends-and-kick-off thing that captains do. The game ended 0-0. We were the better team and we had more shots at their goal but a 10minute match wasn’t long enough to convert our pressure into goals.

The second match of the tournament saw us score our only goal of the tournament. We defeated the Memory Corporation team 1-0, a long range strike by Peter Bell (our best player, he actually plays in the junior leagues – a high standard) was parried by the keeper and James Campbell (intrepid East Fife Mail reporter) dived to head the loose ball into the net. The Memory Corp. (what do the Memory Corp. do?) weren’t bad, we dealt with their attacks well but we were the better side. I even managed a shot on target, the keeper made a world-class save. This was our first game with the blue-shirted referee, he was an idiot; he allowed all sorts of fouls to go unpunished and when I told him that his job was to protect the players and ensure their safety, he was rather unreasonable. I think I annoy my opponents when I play football because I'm always shouting at my team-mates (not the other team's players, that doesn't help me and not usually the referee, I was actually rather polite to him) and it's usually a constant drone, I gain some notoriety for it. I know any team that I'm on isn't going to be the best and organisation is usually our best hope, hence I go about organising.

We faced the tournament favourites in the next match, Grays Bicycles were put together by some East Fife directors and they included some experienced amateur league players. We were on the defensive for periods of this game but I re-arranged the formation with some sublime tactical know-how to limit any damage. They managed a shot against our bar but we also made their keeper perform some heroic stops. It finished 0-0. More stupidity from the blue-shirted referee did not help our case.

With our position in the semi-finals guaranteed, courtesy of our sole victory and clean sheets, I tried to rest some players in the final meaningless group game. Both teams played in red, the blue-shirted referee did nothing to remedy this situation, of course, it was chaotic and it was difficult to work out where my attackers were to pass to them. After a while, I decided just to concentrate on organising our defence and let the attackers do as they wished. The game finished 0-0.

In the semi-final, we faced the Grays Bicycles team again, in a match presided over by the black-shirted referee. They were a little weaker by this time; they had obviously tired and were using their weaker squad players. Nevertheless, we stayed true to form and racked up another 0-0 scoreline. We had a few shots but our keeper wasn’t tested by their efforts. The game was to be decided on penalties – three kicks each. Each team scored two and it went to sudden death. I was trying to avoid taking a kick, I’m generally hopeless at shooting and all activities in the opposing team’s half of the pitch. As manager, I queued up all the other members of the team before me. Every kicker had scored their sudden death kick until their seventh player had his saved by Darren Twinnie, by which time, I had run out of players to ask to take a kick apart from Gordon. I decided to keep Gordy in reserve and I scored, which was nice.

In the final we faced, the Memory Corp. team. We stood a great chance of actually winning the tournament after having already beaten them. The final didn’t go well for us, we had already surpassed our expectations. We just seemed to lose the plot, the midfielders and the attackers didn’t help out the defenders as much as they should have. We conceded a goal in the first half but I expected our team to get stronger in the second half after the substitution. They didn’t. The defence still lacked support and overworked, began to tire, at least that’s the excuse I make for the usually-reliable David Twinnie failing to prevent the clinching goal. I was coming forward more often in the second half to help get an equaliser and relying upon David Twinnie to do the defensive work but soon he was carted off by the St John’s Ambulance man after a late challenge by their player (the blue-shirted fool awarded nothing) and that’s when our hopes evaporated. We got the ball forward into their box a number of times towards the end but it was in vain. I looked around longingly for a Dave Griffin but there wasn't any.

Runners-up was not what I expected we would become at 1pm or even when I thought all 9 players would turn up and even when the preliminary 10 were announced. With this achievement on my football management CV, I’m certainly the hot favourite to succeed Dave Baikie when he’s inevitably sacked. I didn’t go to McPhail’s tavern to collect my runners-up medal at the after-tournament ceremony, I had to quickly rush off to the city.