Last night’s unfortunate loss was a catastrophic blend of bad luck and bad science. The Lepers’ solidarity and camaraderie of Division 2 was quite literally a thing of the past. And when I say "literally”, I’m not using it like literally-illiterate Jamie Red-K-Napp who has provided us with such gems as “Drogba literally destroyed the defender", "They literally decimated them". "He's literally left him for dead" and "The defenders are literally on top of Crouch". This week was Spike’s turn to take a vacation, and he literally couldn’t have left the team more discombobulated. Not content with currently having No girlfriend, the self-confessed ‘player’ of the team had jetted off to Tinerfe Gardens for a week in the sun with his new fling, Lady Luck. And how the Lepers missed her. As if the Lepers weren’t lucked-out enough, Avram Jerzak had returned from a romantic holiday in Abu Dhabi with Abou Diaby to find that founding father JC Hood had given Mike Aage his leperous blessing finally making him three dimensional.
The transcript from the blessing has been reproduced below for your enjoyment:
“Lost your pair of red and blue 3D glasses? Check this out for an easy and cheap way to make your own! Whether you've seen my other video on how to make 3-D pictures using any digital camera, or you have an old magazine or comic book with 3-D images, but you've lost those red and blue glasses. I'll show you a quick and easy way to make your own.
Step 1: All you need are a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, like these that came free with the Kid's Meal, a red and blue permanent magic marker, and any clear piece of flat plastic, like this transparency sheet.
Step 2: Use the old lenses as a template. Simply cut them out along the inside edge of the line, and then colour them with the red and blue markers. Now simply pop our new coloured lenses back into the frames. The blue will cover the right eye, and the red will cover the left. That's it! You’re done. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions or comments. I'm glad to help.”
Space-aged technology!
The game started well with Drake slamming home the opening goal following a quick throw-out by Sheen. But minutes later The Griffin were right back in it with a goal that was either absurdly lucky, or a moment of genius. Sheeno saved the first shot but the striker slammed the rebound into the top corner with a ferocious shot that quite literally went in the goal.
Their second goal was an unquestionable piece of fortune as a parried shot was deflected into the top corner of the goal. With the half time scores set at 2 – 1, the Lepers could have done with a sub, especially as the opposition had 2. They went looking for an equaliser and fell victim to a goal on the counter. But the Lepers began to dominate retaining 80% of possession for the last 10 minutes. But, every time they attacked they were literally fouled. Their complaints to the unusually articulate referee received the response, “you don’t like it when ya get fouled, do ya?” which firstly appeared to imply that the Lepers were a dirty team, and secondly was totally irrelevant as he should have been putting his whistle in his mouth, not talking out of his …….
Unusually for Ames he had managed to play through the first 20 minutes without a single word of warning from the referee. Little did we know he was literally looking to prove a point, and a scientific one at that. Taking the ball on the edge of the D he began by creating a rotating magnetic field. Using Maxwells’ Equation he exerted a force upon a charged particle, in this case the spherical Powerleague ball, creating his own energy. With Ames’ energy density proportional to the square of the field intensity, the opposition had no chance. Against their will, each of the 4 outfield players were drawn towards Ames’ rudimentary electromagnet. By the time Ames had reached the epicentre of the pitch, his force, F, measured in newtons, was equal to q(v x B), where q was the ball’s electric charge, v was the instantaneous velocity of his gammy knee and B was the magnetic ‘field’, also known as Pitch 3.
Clearly the opposition had forgotten about Fleming’s Left Hand Rule and failed to understand this simple GCSE-level relationship between Ames’ thrust, Pitch 3’s ‘field’ and the Current drawing them to the ball. They were as ‘static’ as a Van de Graaff generator leaving math-magician Drake in acres of space. Ames passed the electrically charged sphere to Drake who sent it towards the goal at 10 times the velocity of the goalkeeper’s dive. This potential difference ensured that a goal was achieved.
Unfortunately the Lepers couldn’t add to this goal and shot after shot rained down on the opposition goal. Through a mixture of good luck, disgraceful fouling and fantastic goalkeeper the Griffin kept the Lepers at bay making that 3rd goal as elusive as Ames’ mythological match report.
This loss was an unfortunate decimalisation of the ‘L’ column of the Lepers all time records which currently stand at Played 75, Won 58, Drawn 7, Lost 10, Goals for 455, Goals against 137. With 9 games to go until retirement, the Lepers must average 5 goals per game to reach the hallowed 500 Goal tally. This will be no mean feat with the current goals per game average calculating at 6.07.