Rage Against The Machine – How I Could Just Kill A Man (2000)
I’d been working at the airport for over a year and a good bunch of us always played football over Cranford Park every week. It was proper jumpers for goalposts stuff with scores that took me back to the playground like 33-29 and the like. I miss those days hugely as now the only exercise I seem to get it walking to the bus stop in the car park at work. Maybe I like the football, but another part of the ritual was to play for about 3 hours then head to The White Hart and down a few welcome pints of lager.
We had been playing for a number of weeks when I saw that there was a Five-A-Side tournament coming up soon. The dedicated few amongst us decided that we would enter a team and I arranged a kit for us to wear. The day finally came and we turned up in Egham at the sports centre rairing to go. There were some teams that took themselves far too seriously unlike us who were just out for a good time and if we did well then that was a bonus.
The team was made up of Nick Spanneut in goal, he was our French maestro with legs that go all the way up and down the Champs Elysee. In defence was Mark ‘The Schurmanator’ Schurman who was and probably still is built like a tank, so the name was pretty apt. I was the other defender, and I guess I would be categorised as solid and reliable if not overly skillful. Our midfield was made up of our very own Flycasual, who as our box-to-box Midfield General was the engine of the team. Nick ‘Rinky Dink’ Dermott & Faisal Ahmed were our two silky skilled players who both had the skills to pay the bills, unfortunately at times they were final demands !!! Our striker was our very own goal-hanging, Communist sympathising ginger-whinger Stuart Farris. On paper we had a really good team, I think the problem was that at times the paper was a bit soggy and see-through !!! Having earned a grade C in maths at GCSE I realised that 7 into 5 didn’t go so I took the honourable decision to leave myself as well as ‘Rinky’ out of our first game which was a fairly drab nil-nil bore-fest. For the second game I brought myself and ‘Rinky’ back in and dropped Faisal and Stuart to the bench. This was a good 10 years before the Spanish system of playing without an out and out striker. Hey, maybe I was the inspiration for Pep Guardiola and all of Barcelona’s success !!
The first half was a pretty tight affair and was goalless. Then in the second half Mark & I played our way out of defence and found ourselves just outside their penalty area. Neither of us seem to want to shoot and passed it back and forth between us a few times before I took the brave decision to let rip. My trusty left foot wrapped itself around the ball and the next thing I saw was the net rippling and my shot sitting perfectly in the bottom corner. 1-nil…. Get in. As we ran back to our own half to celebrate, I screamed the most manly thing I had ever said. “COME ON LADS. IT’S STILL NIL-NIL !!!” whilst not being factually correct, it was the inspiration that the team needed to go on and win the game. It worked, we won.
Not the best way to celebrate scoring |
Rage Against The Machine – Pistol Grip Pump (2000)
As a bonus, please find both songs by the original artists