Horley

You go through a bunch of great ideas for bits to write in your head. You’re in the ground and people are saying things and you’re in the bar and people are saying things and you’re on the bus and people are saying things and then you get home, relatively early in the scheme of the football, and it coagulates into a molten mess of the word “fuck”.

Fuck.

We have a game where we just get beat again. We just get beat and we’re beat because nothing we do is better than what they do. We don’t attack better, we don’t defend better and by god we don’t remotely play the ref better.

It’s not a game of individuals but individually there are no complaints. Andy O’Brien is impressive. The new gk is solid. In midfield, Deji puts another foot on the plinth of the statue made in his honour after his performances in the last three weeks. Nate Best impresses and infuriates in almost equal measure and you feel he’s a set of decisions away from being the best player in the league. Blake Loyza again with his goal and his commitment and his all-round play makes you worry about when someone might notice his effort and his grace. Sid is Sid and Jayden is Jayden and Shay is the man that we unfairly demand more of than is possible for a single human on an afternoon like that.

Their first goal is a fluke, a lucky deflection off Callum whose game is maybe affected by the bounce. It has been even, but their 9 is big and quick and balls over the top towards him and their 7 require all across our back 4 to be alert all afternoon. They’re a smart side, Horley, less with the ball at their feet than with Tooting at their heels. They take their fouls. They roll off the pitch in agony and crawl back on it in shadows. Naughty, clever bastards. Their 9 survives an incident in which he leads aerially with an elbow on Callum, potentially another notch in his aggravation. He ought to have gone, the Horley 9, and Shay’s appeals to the lino about what exactly he’d seen fell onto the deaf ears of blind eyes.

For the second home game in a row, Tooting see a goal ruled out. We don’t need VAR in the boondocks to feel hard done by, but the offside call on Mario’s would-be equaliser isn’t contested too harshly. Perhaps the crowd expect little from these officials. Little we receive, as ever.

The second half sees more frustration for the Stripes. Mario and Nate Best switch flanks to try to get some change out their imperious 2. The lad is basically unshiftable and you beg boys to stop taking him on, just look the pass, the cross, the odds. Horley’s right fullback is arguably the man of the match.

Following Tadley, it’s encouraging to see positive moves from the bench. Warren arrives, Sid Dack is given a well-earned break from his seemingly continual 90s, Marcus Whittaker comes on. Jay Dunstan-Digweed makes what feels like a second debut, cut short by an almost immediate “sin bin” for apparent dissent. There’s some confusion as to whether or not he’s been given the caution in a case of mistaken identity, but off he comes. Busy booked in the aftermath. A Horley player walks in the same incident, albeit for 10 minutes as well. Again, confusion reigns regarding refs’ decisions. A theme is emerging.

Towards the end of the 90, Callum Porteous is on the receiving end of an atrocious foul. A Horley lad flies in, two footed, dumping Callum into a lump. In this situation, a certain degree of gamesmanship is acceptable. Expected, even. Hoped for, in this instance. If Horley get the red they’re due after such an incident, Tooting have the chance to exercise a numerical advantage.

As it is, the challenge is so bad that Callum takes exception. He gets up immediately and retaliates. Retaliates again to the Horley lad who challenges the retaliation, and then again as he makes his way to the touchline for the red he hasn’t yet received but knows he’s getting. Tooting win the freekick, but lose the man. All that had to happen was to take the foul. Take it, roll about, see what the principal aggressor gets. Do what those gamesy pricks in claret and blue had been doing the whole time. Play the fucking ref. Give him a decision to make in our favour, for once, by doing fuck all.

Tooting down to ten, the match down to less. We win a free kick on the left hand side of the final third and we need something to go our way.

The ball is whipped in, I can’t remember by whom, and Blake, dear Blake, arrives to slide in and finish. There are moments to go. Tooting with a late equaliser, down to ten, it’s bedlam. We love it. Hold on.

But a minute later, a Horley player is shown red. No-one leaves the pitch. Tooting have conceded a free kick, a Horley player has been shown a red? From the position of match announcer it’s impossible to make out what’s happening.

A fuckery.

The ref approaches the dugout, there is equivocation but no red. Some Horley lad lashes the ball into the box from the freekick they’d somehow won and it ends up in the net and Tooting have lost.

Tooting have lost.

Tooting have lost.

I am not for equivocating here. We have to get smart. We have to defend free kicks in the dying seconds. We cant have two red cards in two games. We can’t have a manager getting a yellow and a sub having to be held back from getting involved. We cant have a lad in the bin for ten for dissent or for any other reason. We can’t have it because it’s fucking costing us.

We can’t have teams coming to Imperial Fields and playing refs better than we can. More importantly, we can’t use refs as an excuse. It’s a different season, a different body of people at the helm, but in the preseason of 22/23, we were told that we have to start taking the course of games out of the hands of incompetent referees. The same applies here today. That ref didn’t have a fucking clue what he was at half the time, neither did his nearside assistant, but we need to stop giving them reasons to punish us. Let their misgivings be their own misgivings and get on with our business.

We need to stop letting opposition teams get into our heads and get into theirs. From the end of the first half it was clear Horley were being cute. The boys have to control themselves. They have to, otherwise results will continue to suffer.

This is getting long. It’s getting long. We haven’t won a game since Halloween lads and we’re playing Christmas tunes.

Sort it out, Tooting. Sort it out.

📸 Ed Parlett