This addition of the bible must open on a sad note. It was brought to my attention that St Bernard’s College have admitted that they plan on letting a small amount of girls to enrol in Years 11 and 12. So ends 67 years of quasi homoerotic school tradition.
Arguably one of the key players in the DSU’s drive towards finals glory was Desmond. It was during this period that he took a spiritual sabbatical to Rome to converse with the new Pope. He returned as a completely new player. Before, he always would attempt to pass the ball off to someone else instead of shooting (trying to set up Arsenal type goals). But now he became a shooting machine scoring goals from all over the court. This metamorphous gave the DSU the most potent striker in the league. Added to this was Desmond’s steely nerve which he used to great effect to become the teams designated penalty taker.
The first two finals series that we participated in highlighted two overriding facts. The first being that we lost (got smashed) both semi finals and a phenomena known as finals fever occurred. Finals fever was a situation where every single player believed in their divine right to play in finals irrespective of the fact that they had not appeared in a game in the last two months. Players who suffered from finals fever were often greeted with “Rod…fancy seeing you here. I thought you were dead.” This meant that for these two finals we played with 7 or 8 players a level well above optimum. After defeat two seasons in a row in the finals Chook decided to resign his position as captain as he once again became overwhelmed with self loathing, alcohol and recreational drugs. It was stipulated at the time that the reason behind Chook resigning the captaincy was that at the semi final loss he had received a random drug test and had tested positive to a number of performance enhancing and recreational drugs.
It was at this time that Ads decided to step up and become captain of DSU. Ads immediately implemented a TQM (Total Quality Management) approach to the team. This meant that those players who weren’t quality were slowly ostracised and left out. The core of the team now consisted of Ads, Chook, Desmond, Freestyler, Jords and Tuma. Tuma was recruited by Jords when it became evident that the team needed more players.
The departures from the team are supposedly meant to be dealt with in an article by team President Desmond (that’s if he can get off of his fat arse and write something instead of making YL phone calls all night) so I’ll leave that to the great man.
It was during Ads’ first season that the team encountered the team that would plague DSU’s existence, Cold as Ice. Cold as Ice consisted of an awesome keeper, a short guy who had an incredible shot and who could turn on a 20c coin, a couple of other random hacks and the Fat Man. The Fat Man possessed arguably the best two feet in the indoor world despite them being attached to a body that was more suited to an American Hot Dog eating champion. Cold as Ice are to this day the best indoor soccer team that I have ever played against.
Ads’ first season in charge had gotten off to a mediocre start. Sitting just out of the top 4 the team had been on the receiving end of some spankings (especially an 11-3 loss to Cold as Ice). With some members of the team losing confidence in Ads’ leadership qualities he knew that a win in the next game was essential to make it to finals. The only problem was that we were playing against Cold as Ice. This game would go down as the single greatest indoor soccer game in the history of the world. Five minutes before the game started it was found out that Chook could not play as he had gone to sleep because he was feeling dizzy and then woke up in Adelaide in bed with an inflatable doll in a cheerleader uniform. Without Chook the team desperately sought a new recruit in the form of Desmond’s friend Benny from the block. The game was close from the start with Cold as Ice getting an early lead but DSU disrupting their play enough with tough tackling and hard man marking. Tuma was having a ripper game and by half time we were down 4-2 (a sizable lead in a close game but still within touching distance).
At the half time huddle it was noticed that Benny had disappeared (he was having a heart attack at the time) so we had to play the entire second half without any substitutes. The second half did not start well for us with a penalty being awarded against us. With Jords in goals we always felt that we had a chance at stopping a penalty, but that was until the Fat Man stepped up. What happened next is indoor soccer folk lore. The Fat Man, who had never missed a penalty in his indoor career, stepped up and hammered his penalty at the top left corner of the goal. It was a certain goal until Jords’ hand clawed it clear. This was the starting point of the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Goals by Tuma and a brace by Dez gave us a 5-4 lead with 2 minutes left. With Ads now in goals he decided to slow down the tempo of the game. However, the Fat Man managed to catch Desmond in possession and sprinted clear of his marker Tuma. His shot was the equivalent of a missile which Ads did not see until it hit his shoulder as he dived to protect the goal. With this scare visibly shaking Ads (his very white shorts had decided to turn a shade of brown) he demanded that all the on field players pull back into their own half and hold onto the ball. The remaining time was played out and there ended the greatest game in indoor history DSU 5 Cold as Ice 4.
Oh yeah, we played them in the grand final that season and they kicked the crap out of us.
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