Sunday, ruddy Sunday

Yesterday started well as I read of Oldham's first goal and points of the new season. I then dragged myself out of bed to go to the Business Opportunity and Franchise Expo at the Showgrounds.

Quite interesting - got free sweets at the candy dispensing machine franchise stall, a free cookie at the Cookie Time stall, and more sweets when I successfully passed a rugby ball through a hole (to be fair, I threw it more NFL style than Tri Nations) at the ANZ stall. It didn't even touch the sides.

I spoke to several franchises, some sounded bad, some sounded too much like get-rich-quick and some definitely got my interest. Plenty to think about anyway.

There were also seminars which I would have loved to have stuck around for but I needed to get back ahead of the big game.

The pitch was again awful, probably worse than last week and it felt like you were running through quick sand most of the time. We dominated pretty much the whole of the game, and should have won by a big margin. But some wayward crossing/passing/finishing (not all by me) meant it was fairly close. We ended up winning 4-2 to progress to the Plate Final in 2 weeks time. All 4 goals were scored by my strike partner and here are the other incidents of note from the game:

* Before kick off the ref demanded everyone tucked their shirts in (Dad - you'd have been very pleased with that)
* Rob getting very deliberately stamped on (in his nasty place) by a guy who he'd slide tackled (fairly) twice in quick succession. Ref's verdict - free kick to them.
* Our keeper breaking the 6 second rule by around 3/10ths of a second. Ref's verdict - was ridiculous.
* At one of their corners an attacker punched on of our defenders on the ear, knocking him off his feet. Ref's verdict - red card. Couldn't not do really.
* Players swearing a lot. Ref's verdict - yellow card to the next person who swears. Which he didn't actually do.
* My leg being landed on by a falling 7ft, 20 stone Chris Kamara lookalike - and me surprisingly not being injured.
* Me getting substituted with 20 minutes to go as I "was looking a bit tired". My verdict - RUBBISH, I was actually doing more running in the second half. I wasn't best pleased as it was only 2-1 at the time and they'd just hit the post twice. I'm not bitter though, I only whinged about it for about 5 hours afterwards. And then again a little bit now.

But it's a team game, and we won. May even be able to get a bit more video footage of the final. Excited?

The evening ended with me picking up Si and Leanne from the airport. They'd been on holiday in Australia for 2 weeks and although it's great to have them back, I'm going to miss their car which I had on loan whilst they were away.