There’s an office competition being ran for Cheltenham Festival. We have fake money to bet on the races, the winner gets some money back etc… I missed the deadline for submission today so it was decided I would bet on all the number 11’s (at a guess linked to my football number?). Annoying I’m doing better winning wise today than I did yesterday when I tried to pick them myself.

Have a learnt the secret to Horse Racing and gambling… guess?

So yes I had this written yesterday morning, but due to the insistence that the girls get to do the nicknames again I had to wait for them. Therefore this is only going out now. For the record, I don’t think the names are as good this week but nothing I can do about that!

The big write up… Exciting changes for this week, instead of sitting on the train to London with “less ginger than Rich”, “Vicky Pollard in Disguise” and “Stolen Donnas desk” I am in fact on the Oxford Tube (Bus) heading to London with “Ginger”. This makes less difference as I trust those who played were adequately sore. I know for a fact that “Bobby Charlton” is having troubles sitting down today due to a freak meeting on a dark and cold night between his arse and some concrete.

Moving swiftly away from talking about “George Best”’s sore arse, and onto the match at hand. Crazy levels of confusion over the teams building up to the game, lots of swapping and changing, players becoming available and players becoming unavailable. Also, I didn’t have time in my busy schedule to send a team sheet email around yesterday, so accept my apologies for this. We almost had everyone there on time to kick off at 6:30 this week, Brendan was running slightly late and “Old Man” was still driving back from the airport. However, the real reason we had to delay the actual kick off wasn’t either of these, someone, during the warm up had put one of the two balls we own onto the roof of the sports centre. So we had to wait for “belly broke the sofa” to beg the Pleasure centre to go out and get it back for us, successfully may I add.

We kicked off with numbers even, the usual suspects on each side, STUDio were missing “Impressive How You Get Your Name Mentioned When You Don’t Play”, Topvile had picked up Brendan and were temporarily missing “Getting older”. “silent but deadly” was also missing due to holiday, not to mention “Aslan”’s absence, but who wouldn’t rather go on a date with Jack’s Mum than play football with your mates? “Roll with it”, “going to be saying roll with it soon” and “G” were also absent for Topville.

STUDio took a 2 goal lead, totally against the run of play, the first was a swift break by “my brother is hot” , after intercepting the ball just inside his own half he travelled the remainder of the pitch before putting it past new goalkeeper “Jussi Jaaskelainen vs Liverpool”. Admittedly I have done the same as a few weeks ago, my memory on the scoring order is a little bit flaky Strangely though I remember that I got the 2nd, a ball across from “my new housemate likes to watch people sleeping”, terrible first touch from me seemed to take the keeper by surprise (not sure why) and I mishit it into the corner. What a great goal, lolocopter oclock!

At this point “Knows what a Combine Harvester is” jogged up (in the wrong kit!), yikes even Brendan managed to wear the right colour shirt. Giving Topville the extra man for the last ten mins of the first half. This didn’t stop STUDio, who lead by their illustrious captain scored a 3rd, flick down the wing from “love rat” to me, who volleyed into the far corner from distance (EGO EGO EGO). Topville got 2 back before the end of the half to take us in at halftime with scores at 3-2 to STUDio.

A predetermined initiative, decided upon by the remaining football council (we missss youuu Witthhheerrss) was announced at half time, this was to try and counter the advantage given by having extra men on one team. Basically, in this example “Paul Robinson vs Croatia” swapped sides 10 mins into the second half. This meant that both teams had a man advantage for about 20 mins of the game. GENIUS no? Well in hind sight maybe not, this man advantage meant that STUDio flew away with the lead. From being 4-2 up at the swap, it finished 9-4. On the way to this score line there were some class goals scored. Quick ball out from the keeper to “Chimeo” on the right, who slid the ball inside to me, a cheeky back heel flick from me onto “Knows what to do with a screwdriver” on the left, left him open to plant the ball in the far corner. Also mention “cheese” blasted finish into the near top corner for another one of the goals and “Not fussy”s well placed strike into the far bottom corner.

The shame wall this week only has one booking on it, and that’s for “facial hair” for his sliding tackle on “hot stuff”.

So as promised, I’m on the train on the way to London and I’m tapping away at the long (?) awaited match report.

Tiniest of turn around in the teams, at the last minute “Detention” had to stick around at work to finish “Budgie Smuggler”‘s report. This wasn’t a too bigger problem as “Pick Up An Oar” showed up at the last minute to fill the numbers.

After waiting around for a while for all players (and kit) to show up we got underway. I was told I should include the warm up game as part of the match, which STUDio won about 7-0 but I guess I cant 🙁

As per the kit, they were defo worth the wait. We all looked so sexy in them it has to be said. Was great to see “Roll With It” managed to wear the right colour for once.

A HORRIBLE start for STUDio, going 5 nil down within the first 10 or so minutes. Some desperately bad goal keeping from the award winning keeper “Hot Brother” let 3 in, then a shocking OWN GOAL from a certain someone who does not deserve to have his name in the same sentence as goal. So he will remain nameless, sort of, ***** “I like Women’s underwear” *****. “EEK, spider” took full advantage of the bad goalkeeping and put the first few of his 6 away, one of which was a nutmeg on the weak keeper.

STUDio FC fought hard to come back into it, finishing the game at 10-7 to Topville. I “Under The Hat Is A Comb Over” wont go into too much detail about my wonder goal, picking the ball up and taking on 3 Topville players before slotting it in the corner. The Topville 10 was made up from 6 for “Battery-powered Toy car”, 2 for “Daz White Dentistry” and 1 for “I’ll See You On The Court”. Confusion over the STUDio scorers, 4 of us think we scored 2, so as “captain” I don’t mind taking the moral high ground and mark it down as 1. Even though we all know “Jelly Belly” only scored 1, the rest of his shots went over the fence. So that’s 2 each for “Pencil Sharpener”, “Catwalk Roadkill” and “Doesn’t Know What He’s Getting Himself Into”.

I might make a shame wall and keep a list of who deserved to be sent off in each game. I know for sure I’ll be at the top of the list for this week! I still think “Tweedle Frank” deserved it, but kids its always bad to lash out. I wont be the only person on the list who for this week…

For next week, can we please be on time! It’s due to the 45 minute game instead of an hour game that STUDio lost… Honest!

For the record… all nicknames were supplied by “Wanna be ginger hottie” and “Fatty wants a COOKIE”.

I’ve been arguing with myself over whether or not I can/should post the weekly football write-up emails I send around the office after the game each week. The conclusion is that I can, however that I need to remove all proper names. Therefore as this week’s email included A LOT of nicknames I think I will leave those in and remove real names. Should still be very easy to work out who’s who from those in the know.

On the request of certain people from the office, I have been asked to write about me switching desks within the office.

An introduction into both, not that it is very easy to describe, but I started off on the researcher side of the office. With my back to the wall on General Researcher 1 desk, between CamCam “Takes it in the” Brown and “Big Rug”. Withers opposite, the Snatchinator and Alex around.

Now I’m moved to the exact opposite end of the office, on the accounts management side. Again I’ve ended up with my back to the wall, watching over the whole office… sorted. Stuck with some Ginger broad and an Amy.

So what do I think of the move… boringly I’ll say it’s different. The Ginger broad has bullied me into saying she is a full scale hottie… make your own decision on that in the picture below. The other let down with this side of the office is the need to do work, on the researcher side there was always a few mins spare to talk about totally random, usually slightly dodgy/inappropriate topics. On the whole, yes it is missed, but bring on the dosh!

Lets talk football… Wednesday is the next installment in the office football saga. Week 3 of the new season brings us one week closer to the end of season drinking binge!

It is also the first chance we have to wear our brand spanking new kits! Lets hope the unparalleled excitement which engulfed the office when they arrived last week, is present tomorrow night and we get a strong competitive match. Of course we are going to win, but that just goes without saying.

Other football related things of interest recently, haha Eduardo! Always a shame to see a pro get hurt on the pitch, but it is definitely worth remembering he is Gunner scum.

Torres hat-trick – good lad! About time Liverpool got some points again! Looking forward to the delayed champs league 2nd leg vs Inter, why they couldn’t play on the Tuesday/Wednesday instead of separate weeks?